What Happens When Big Companies Forget To Renew Great Domain Names?

By Anna Johnson on December 20th, 2010

What happens when big companies forget to renew great domain names? The same thing that happens when small businesses and individuals fail to renew great domain names. They lose them… and sometimes to their arch rivals!

Last week, major Australian retailer Wesfarmers and owner of the major hardware chain Bunnings forgot to renew ‘hardware.com.au’. That’s right, they FORGOT to renew it.

What was hardware.com.au worth to Wesfarmers? Who knows, but it was worth a lot to the company’s arch-rival Woolworths which bought the domain name for $33,333 and (according to our sources) was willing to spend up to $100,000 to acquire it.

Woolworths is planning a major entry into the $36 billion Australian hardware market and obviously sees the value in having a premium domain name.

For its part, Wesfarmers might want to sign up to Domainer Income so they don’t forget to renew any of their other premium domain names!

Sources: Simon Johnson, “Bunnings Loses Hardware – Woolworths Snaps It Up = [Record Sale],” Domainer Income, December 15, 2010

This entry was posted on Monday, December 20th, 2010 at 4:30 am and is filed under Domain Names, Feature. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “What Happens When Big Companies Forget To Renew Great Domain Names?”

Ashley McKeon Says:
December 20th, 2010 at 6:31 am
Great story, Simon Question: Who/what snapped up the name hardware.com.au and on-sold it to WOW?
Anna Johnson Says:
December 20th, 2010 at 7:04 am
Woolworths’ ad agency M&C Saatchi got the domain name in the ‘drop’ i.e. the domain name was expiring and M&C Saatchi used drop.com.au (a drop catching service) to bid on the domain before it became ‘expired’. Anyone could have participated in the drop and got the domain name had they offered enough for it. Interesting that Woolworths was willing to pay $100k too!