Philips Lighting, an entity operated by the Philips company, is rebranding. According to the news release published late last week, “Philips Lighting (Euronext: LIGHT), the world leader in lighting, today announced its intention to change its name from Philips Lighting to Signify..” The main company, Philips, will continue operating under its longstanding brand name.
Smartly, the company acquired the exact match .com domain name, Signify.com. From what I can see using DomainTools’ Whois history tool, it looks like the Signify.com domain name was acquired late last year. A historical Whois record from October 31, 2017 shows that the domain name was registered to Marksmen, Inc., a company that helps brands covertly acquire domain names from third parties. Prior to that, Signify.com was owned by a company called Signify Solutions Limited.
Because Signify.com was acquired privately, the purchase price is not known. Philips is a public company, so there is a chance the purchase price could be revealed at some point in an investor filing, but my guess is that it was not substantial enough to warrant that. Signify is a great brand name, and Signify.com is a high value domain name asset. My guess is that the domain name was a six figure purchase.
The domain name acquisition strategy was smart. It looks like Philips announced the rebrand long after the domain name was acquired. Had they waited to acquire the domain name until after the rebranding was announced, the company may have had to pay a premium price with the former owner knowing who was behind the acquisition and what their plans are. I presume companies like Philips work with brand and domain management firms like Marksmen to get good advice on domain name acquisitions.
Signify.com is an excellent domain name and it looks like the acquisition was well done.
Good mindsets Philips, thinking “Toy R Us” could / should have digital first was/is scale you do not spend $5m to mothball the perceived threat “Toys.com” you serve and persist the digital platform/s