Earlier this month, Jamie Zoch reported that “Signet.com has been acquired by a currently unknown CSC Corporate Domains client.” The domain name was sold by Netincome Ventures, Garry Chernoff’s domain investment firm. From what I can see using DomainTools Whois History tool, Garry’s company owned Signet.com since at least 2004, the date of the earliest historical Whois record.
I have been given permission to share that Signet.com was sold for $300,000 in a deal brokered by Afternic. Garry told me the deal took three months to negotiate. The sale was confirmed by a representative from Afternic, but the company declined to provide further details about the deal.
I presume Ron Jackson will independently confirm the deal and it will be listed in the DNJournal sales report once he has done his due diligence. Assuming that is the case, this will be the tenth largest publicly reported domain name sale of 2018, tied with the $300,000 sales of EEN.com and The.Club.
Signet.com does not yet resolve, and the domain name is still registered to CSC Corporate Domains, Inc. As a result, it is still unclear who acquired Signet.com or how the domain name will be used. I will keep an eye
Signet is a multi billion dollar publicly held jewelry company that does business under multiple brands including Kay, Zales, Jared, etc. Would assume they acquired the domain.
Yes indeed!
If that’s the case, $300k seems like a pretty low price tag for a one-word name dot-com that exactly matches your brand name.
I think the price is solid.
If there were 10 very large companies with the “Signet” branding, perhaps it would have more value because there would be more competition to buy it.
I’m going off the information that R P presented. If in fact this domain was purchased by a multi-billion dollar company that thought it was important enough to own their brand name as a one-word dot-com … they could have easily paid 7-figures, and would have, if the seller wasn’t interested in anything less.
If you’re a multi-billion dollar company, using a particular brand name … it doesn’t matter if 10 other companies, large or small, are using it or not. You’ll pay top dollar to own your name, especially before someone else does, later on.
Here’s another way to look at it, especially because we don’t know who bought this particular domain name yet.
Let’s say a multi billion dollar company buys its exact match .com domain name for $300,000:
This company grew to become a multi billion dollar business without its exact match .com domain name, so it doesn’t think owning the EMD is all that important. If they can get it for $300k, great. If not, no big deal they will continue to thrive as is with the domain name they have.
Just because a company is large does not mean it will spend much more to buy the domain name it hasn’t needed.
That’s true. It doesn’t mean that just because a company is large that it will spend more to buy a domain name it hasn’t exactly needed, but … If you’re a multi-billion dollar company, you obviously have pockets deep enough to spend 7-figures on a domain and that’s my point. The money was there and it was left on the table. The seller could have completed a 7-figure sale if they were willing to firmly say no to anything less.
An EMD is extremely valuable to a multi-billion dollar company and if they’re trying to buy it, they obviously think it’s important. And If they’re smart (emphasis on smart) … they’ll buy it at 7-figures if that’s what the seller wants, because another company can come along and Trademark that name for an entirely different market, buy that domain and then they’ll never be able to own it again.
When you’re in the 10 to 11 figure revenue bracket, spending an additional $700k is nothing. If you plan on being around long-term, this purchase is a no-brainer. A company of that size will recoup 7-figures like it was printing money.
Ask yourself this question? … If Google started off as GoogleSearch.com, because Google.com was already taken years ago, but it still became the behemoth it is today. If all of a sudden Google.com came up for sale and the seller wanted a million dollars … you think Google wouldn’t pay it with limited negotiations? That deal would have never taken 3 months. The Google guys would have taken that million dollars out of their right front jean pocket and said here … have a nice day, and went on with their business. Meanwhile that million dollars would have rolled back into their accounts within hours.
One thing to keep in mind is that Signet (jeweler) is not a consumer facing brand. That is their corporate domain and is non transactional. I think they own gold.com and forward to kay, and a few other killers. So they aren’t clueless. Maybe they didn’t know what was going to happen with new Gs etc and decided to hold off on upgrading since non consumer facing.
As far as selling price, signet not a great marketing brand because many probably can’t spell it. Not many people would pay $300K for that domain, probably only the jewelry holding company.
Another interesting fact is that Warren Buffett’s company Richline acquired and relaunched Jewelry.com under the radar. Perhaps that’s a reason Signet felt compelled to upgrade.
Please note Warren Buffet also largest shareholder of Verisign. He’s betting billions on .com succeeding. And backing it up buying top tier .com.
“Just because a company is large does not mean it will spend much more to buy the domain name it hasnt needed.”
It depends on the company digital marketing and branding strategy, it’s not black and white as you say.
It’s always a case-by-case scenario … 🙂
Typo, it’s “its not black OR white”.