Back in 2007, I wrote an article about the Pharmacy.com domain name, which had been put up for sale with a reported asking price in the 8 figure range. Unfortunately, the Red Herring article I based my report on is no longer online. I just learned that Pharmacy.com domain name was acquired by Walgreens last year, although the domain name is not being used at the moment.
To learn more information about this deal, I reached out to Josh Bourne, Managing Partner of Fairwinds Partners, the company that had been tapped to broker Pharmacy.com back in 2007. Bourne was kind enough to provide some details, although the price and other details are subject to a non-disclosure agreement and remain confidential.
“The company we sold pharmacy.com to the first time came back to us about 4 years later and asked if we could assist with divesting it,” said Bourne. “After a fairly routine sales cycle, we brokered pharmacy.com to the Walgreen Company in 2013.”
Bourne went on to clarify that Fairwinds Partners was not technically the broker on this deal. Fairwinds set up a separate company called DigitalDNA, and since 2008, DigitalDNA has been the brokerage division in the Fairwinds Partners family of companies.
Owning Pharmacy.com is a big win for Walgreens, no matter what they end up doing with it. In the pharmacy business, competition is intense, and a domain name like Pharmacy.com can be used for a separate brand or it can act as companion domain name to Walgreen’s core business. Perhaps even more importantly with this acquisition, Walgreens has prevented one of its major competitors from operating it and also prevented an upstart company from getting involved in the space.
Kudos to the team at DigitalDNA for helping to close out a deal with one of the major brands after several years.
Thanks to George Kirikos for the tip via Twitter.
Well done DDNA!
This will go in my files as yet another example to point to when large corporations ask: “WHY would we want to own the category name for our industry?”
Nice digging George, and thanks for posting Elliot!
Aron
Fantastic deal and just shows great domains end up with great companies.
Well done on all sides!!
Thanks for the report Elliot
The Inconvenient News that ‘New gTLD Salesforce/Bloggers’ conveniently ignores.
seriously.
Had I not seen George’s tweet, I may have missed it, too. The sale appears to have been under the radar.
The new gTLDs are going to impact all domain investors at least in some ways, and I think it’s good to have coverage from various sources.
How can a new gtld go up against a one word .com like Pharmacy.com?0
There is no comparison, as something has to be stuffed to the left of the .com…
I guess there might be some merit to Boston.Pharmacy, CVS.Pharmacy, InternetPharmacy….etc.
Not sure people would trust a pharmacy that uses a brand new domain name though.
Sorry to the left of the gtld… Force of habit
They also own Happy.com, which forwards to their main site Walgreens.com
Thanks because they bought Happy Harry’s:
http://www.walgreens.com/topic/page/happy-harrys.jsp
I sold a similar Medical domain to a medical group who had offices all over Canada and the US.. They had a similar domain and wanted the generic short version, it now forwards to their main site, I’m confident Walgreens will do the same with Pharmacy.com… It was my highest domain sale and I was glad to see it went to a good home.
Monster deal,congrats to buyer and seller.
Elliot,Walgreens also acquired Farmacia.com the same day it acquired Pharmacy.com.Farmacia mean Pharmacy in Spanish. Very smart move by Walgreens to buy the spanish version.
Domain Name: FARMACIA.COM
Registrar: CSC CORPORATE DOMAINS, INC.
Whois Server: whois.corporatedomains.com
Referral URL: http://www.cscglobal.com
Name Server: NS6.WALGREENS.COM
Name Server: NS7.WALGREENS.COM
Status: clientTransferProhibited
Updated Date: 01-aug-2013
Creation Date: 25-nov-1998
Expiration Date: 24-nov-2014
Domain Name: PHARMACY.COM
Registrar: CSC CORPORATE DOMAINS, INC.
Whois Server: whois.corporatedomains.com
Referral URL: http://www.cscglobal.com
Name Server: NS6.WALGREENS.COM
Name Server: NS7.WALGREENS.COM
Status: clientTransferProhibited
Updated Date: 01-aug-2013
Creation Date: 18-jul-1994
Expiration Date: 17-jul-2019