What To Do With The Domains Of Dead Dot Coms?
from the might-not-want-to-buy-them dept
Some interesting stories from companies that bought the domain names from dead dot coms and got more than they expected in doing so. eVineyard bought Wine.com and found out that they suddenly had to fulfill coupons that the old Wine.com had offered (even though they legally didn’t have to). Even worse, they had to sit through last month’s numerous stories about the out-of-business version of Wine.com, which many people confused with them (which, of course, is their fault for changing their name to Wine.com). Allwall.com bought Art.com and found similar sorts of problems as well. Maybe there should be an accounting measure for “badwill”.
Comments on “What To Do With The Domains Of Dead Dot Coms?”
Bad Brand Names
Apparently the conventional wisdom is that there’s no such thing as a bad brand name. No matter what kind of reputation a company has for making utter crap, there’s always someone willing to pay for co-branding rights. At least that’s the conclusion I reached after hearing that someone bought a brand name I thought was pure crap: possibly Packard Bell, but my memory is fuzzy.
The one notable exception is with airlines that crash due to their own negligence, e.g. ValuJet (now AirTran).