Wine.Club Up for Auction at NamesCon With $150k Reserve

I saw and wanted to share the tweet below from .Club registry CEO Colin Campbell regarding the Wine.Club domain name and its inclusion in the NamesCon domain auction that is being conducted by Right of the Dot:

I reached out to Campbell and .Club Chief Marketing Officer Jeff Sass to ask about the auction and the $150k reserve price. Here’s what Sass had to say in a response to my email:

“Needless to say, Wine.club is one of the best .club premium names, and with countless wine clubs around the world there are a number of potential high profile suitors for the name, from established wineries and mainstream publications to wine entrepreneurs. With that in mind we’re very comfortable with the reserve number.”

Because the domain name is going to be sold at auction, it would not be eligible for the same type of deal as the Coffee.Club deal that was a part of the Startup.Club program. Sass did add that, “if, after obtaining the name, the winning bidder wanted to approach us with a business plan for the name and apply for Startup.club, it is certainly something we could consider relative to participation in marketing, PR and Ad support.”

I would imagine Wine.Club is one of the more valuable .Club domain names, and it will be interesting to see if the domain name sells. Based on this morning’s tweet from Campbell, it seems that the registry is confident it will sell for more than that.

Out of curiosity, do you think Wine.Club will sell at or above its reserve price at NamesCon?


Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

14 COMMENTS

  1. It’s a great name. It’s worth well more than 150,000 but this is a domain investor convention. It is a true category killer but not for a domain investor. There are hundreds of thousands of wine clubs. Every winery has a club. If an entrepreneur wants the name to rule a category like wine clubs – lets rock. Any brand in the space would be happy with it. That being said again this is a domainer convention. If it does not sell. It does not mean it is not worth it. It means a domainer didn’t want to risk it. And I am ok with that. Eventually it will find the right owner at the right price. Lastly, if someone does buy it and wants to be part of the StartUp.club that would be cool.

    Colin

    • If it is worth more, why not hold onto it, and let the domain investors have another .club domains, likely unless someone is an end user they are not going to take a dive on a $150K gtld gamble.

      wineclub.com,.net.,.co all sit parked

      the .org has a mini site on it

      I think you guys are asking to much, good luck.

    • “There are hundreds of thousands of wine clubs. Every winery has a club.”
      Come on, let’s be serious … 🙂
      do you have any idea of the average revenues/size of a winery? do you know what’s the average profitability of a winery? do you know what’s their average spending in A&P on sales? do you really think that an average-sized winery would spend on a domain more than what they do for their whole equipment? and maybe for their (little or no profit) “vanity” side-business, their “wine club”? … I don’t think so.
      Maybe a multinational or a huge winery, and the tangible benefits of buying a new Gtld has yet to be seen, but surely not the average winery …
      I think you have no or little idea about what you are talking about in this case.
      Here we go with some useful stats (US only): http://www.winesandvines.com/template.cfm?section=widc&widcDomain=wineries
      http://www.wineinstitute.org/resources/statistics
      And a nice State of the Wine Industry, 2014 edition: http://www.svb.com/uploadedFiles/Content/Blogs/Wine_Report/2014_Report/wine-report-2014-pdf.pdf
      And these are just a few random samples …
      IMHO, researching and learning more about the structure, dynamics and performances of the underlying business/industries associated to the “keyword” of the domain you are dealing with is always helpful …
      Otherwise is just smoke and mirrors …

  2. Until the general public shows that they will accept a gTLD as much as a .com then these inflated prices are extremely speculative. Flowers.mobi may have made sense at first blush as a speculation and we know how that story ended.

    The buyer of coffee.club overpaid, that’s why they were so giddy because they couldn’t believe they got $100k for it. Now asking $150k for this. Not as crazy as the Holiday.com recent auction, but still crazy.

  3. The only reason Coffee.Club sold for 100 grand is because they only have to pay 10 grand a year for it. Wine.Club could probably sell for the same money with the same terms but not if someone has to put all the money up front.

    The only way this name sells for 150k is if it has the Startup Club terms and spreads the payments for ten years. If not it will never ever get a one time payment of 150 grand. Never. I don’t even think it would sell for a one time payment of 50 grand. The reserve is way to high.

    • As well .club promised to market coffee.club and get the signups, and open up their marketing department, given the buyer already had a business operating in the space, and was personally pitched to has a lot more to do with it.

  4. 150k for Wine.club? LOL! 😀 that’s a rip-off …
    IMHO the owner of WineClub.com, which is way better, would be glad to sell it for that price.
    I see that some (many) people are too disconnected from reality of underlying businesses/companies … you should start to think how much that type of business can afford to spend (invest) given its current and expected structural profitability …
    But of course there will always be (unwise) people who waste a lot of money, sinking their main business … I’ve seen a lot of them in my career in the financial industry …
    Good luck!

    • Unwise people? your being way too nice.. Anyone who doles out anywhere near 10K for one of these is a blithering idiot, These people you talk about learn nothing for what history has already taught them, they believe the left of the dot is far more relevant than the right of the dot, As for risk, their not worried in the least because they have MSMD built into their genetics, “Monkey See Monkey Do”, If Frank Schilling is investing them, they MUST be a safe investment!, just like when Schwartz gave mobility $200,000 for a name that he later sold for $6500, “if Rick spent that much money he must know something that we don’t”

      You cant change stupid not matter how hard you try.

  5. Too late to these comments but I purchase 5 domain names .club and I think make a great investment because seeing that Wine.club pay for the $ 104K in one month to register think that this opportunity could not stop at the chance and register:

    http://www.tempranillo.club
    http://www.giro.club
    http://www.ayer.club
    http://www.acall.club
    http://www.ainsurance.club

    Take po si be an investor interested in making offers send to Jose in joesaba@gmail.com.

  6. August 29 2015

    What was the final outcom of the auction ??

    Who bought it ??

    What are they doing with it ??

    Need more info on the Startup.CLUB
    mentioned above…

    Thanks in Advance…

    ~Patricia Kaehler
    Ohio USA
    DomainBELL — DropGrabs
    .
    .
    .

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