Maybe $2.6 Million for Pizza.com Isn’t that Outrageous Afterall
Thursday, May 8th, 2008
Papa John’s has sold over $1 billion in pizza online.
Papa John’s pizza has sold over $1 billion in pizza online, the company just announced. $400 million of that came last year alone. It has spend $15 million developing its online ordering technology. What’s another $2.6 million?
Just about every pizza chain with more than a half dozen restaurants allows online ordering, and many provide incentives (such as discounts) for customers to order online rather than call. Pizza Hut claims its online orders have grown sixfold in the last three years, according to the AP article.
It still strikes me as an interesting move for one of the major pizza companies to buy Pizza.com. These companies live and die by the brand. They’d rather have people go to PapaJohns.com than Pizza.com.
I have my doubts on whether the $2.6 million bid at Sedo was legitimate and if the deal will go through. But I’ll be more than happy to “eat” my words.
Tags: pizza.com
Pizza is heavily driven by advertising. “get the door it’s dominos” or “papa johns” are engrained in your head. You can SAY them to 411, but when it comes to spelling them - is it hyphen, two ms or ps… so the domain is not going to help for Traffic but as a call-to-action for advertising that’s easier to spell and port to web orders.
The shortest distance between two points is a straight line. Pizza.com is a perfectly straight line. Will 2.6 million seem like a lot in 5-10 years? It depends on how well the domain gets utilized. The potential for greatness is there. Was Business.com a decent buy at $150,000? Must be a pure name … with a solid market foundation underneath. Pizza.com is a high performance sports car. Driver needed.
With these numbers being posted by these companies, pizza.com was a bargain at $2.6 million.
@ Owen - I agree. Still waiting to see who bought it…if anyone.
There are many marketing applications involved with Targeted Key Word domain names. Many of which have not been created yet.The possibilities are multi faceted and almost endless. Greek rooted Key Word .com names are ridiculously undervalued.
It still boils down to 3 three things: service! service!! service!! That is why PapaJohn’s excels. Even with a top notch names, if the product and service are lousy, I don’t think Pizza.com would reach its full potential.
“But I’ll be more than happy to “eat” my words.”
Will that be with:
extra cheese?
pepperoni?
sausage?
anchovies?
Patrick
Great post - I would like to place an order for a SeafoodPizza.com
…and curiously enough, I see that Ron reports that FrozenPizzas.com just sold for a price of…$2300.
Great name. Super low price.
Wow Papa John’s pizza has sold over $1 billion in pizza online. Pizza.com is the perfect name to build a strong online and offline brand.This should be a no-brainer for any of the big chains… wake up and smell the pizza.com
I have to wonder how Sedo or any other auction company can stay in business for very long without finding some way to legitimize sales.
Perhaps they could requiring a credit card on account that gets charged a % of the sale immediately upon closing. The money could go into an escrow account for the seller if the deal goes South.
If someone bids 2.6 million, for example only, and incurs a 5% charge for backing out - the press alone on a couple of deals might discourage others from making false bids or failing to close on a deal….
Kelly L has the right idea to get some reserve money in the account 5% would be good. Any of these auction services can allow the bidders to make fake bids. The worst part is if you have a domain reserve for 100k you can make multiple bids up 99k and get a lot of attention for free.
It is better to have quality buyers than quantity. Like I said before Pizza.com may back fired, it is possible they are working with the next bidder because number 1 did not go through.
I hope that is not true but if your bidding over 1,000,000 for a name they should get a 10% reserve. Sometimes when you have a real buyer who wants the name you will have some fake bidder bumping up your price with no intention of really buying the name. This screws the end buyer.
It is the same thing with real estate or buying a home they need to get earnest money. Why not do this for a domain name.
@ Don, Kelly -
Here’s another question. Let’s say the winning bidder comes through. What if the bidder just before him was fake?
This is more rational for charging some sort of deposit. I think you can get a “bond” for a small fee through a reputable party. Auctioneers in California have to post a bond with the state that can be taken by the state if there are any complaints about the auctioneer. Same idea here.
If you’ve bid on and won a high priced auction before, you are “confirmed” for bidding on big domains, otherwise you have to post some sort of bond or make a deposit.
I think that sounds pretty reasonable.
It is really hard to say exactly what needs to be done but it is pretty apparent that there is alot of frustration in the auction marketplace about “pseudo-Sedo” sales.
Hey, I know it’s not just Sedo… I had to make the word play. You know how crazy domaining will make you…