Goldberger on Toys.com Team, eToys.com Buyer Remains Mystery
Friday, February 6th, 2009
Follow up to yesterday’s auction story.
I spent several hours yesterday reading through bankruptcy documents before breaking the news about a major domain name auction in Delaware on February 4. Since then I’ve read more documents to try to piece together the major winners at the auction.
The two high profile winners — Faculty Lounge Partners and Eagle, LLC probably won’t ring a bell with you. It appears they were set up to buy domains in the auction.
There’s a familiar name on the Faculty Lounge Partners purchase documents for Toys.com: Ari Goldberger. I have sent an e-mail to the domain name attorney by the same name to confirm his involvement and will update this story later. You can see the initial qualified bid document submitted before the auction here (pdf). [Update: See comments for direct connection.]
As for the buyer of eToys, ePregnancy, Baby Universe and Dreamtime Baby, that’s harder to figure out. Eagle, LLC is a generic and short name meant to make it hard to track down the owners. I looked up the company’s LLC filing in Delaware and the listed agent is a corporate filing mill. Eagle, LLC basically assigned all of its negotiating power to its attorney, Jonathan Korn of Blank Rome. The name of Eagle, LLC’s assistant secretary, Biana Fuks, is on the document but Google searches didn’t pull up anything interesting. I didn’t find any obvious clients on the Blank Rome web site that may be represented.
But it’s obvious Eagle, LLC is backed by major players. Most bidders submitted a low offer of $100,000 or so to start, which required only a $10,000 deposit. Eagle submitted a $1,000,000 offer, requiring a $100,000 deposit. It also deposited the remainder of the $1,000,000 in an account at Blank Rome.
The ideal buyer for eToys and ePregnancy is Toys R Us, which also has the Babies R Us brand. The purchase included customer information, which adds significant value. But I am unable to link the Eagle to Toys R Us. You can review the Eagle qualified bid document here (pdf).
Tags: bankruptcy auction, domain name auction, eagle llc, etoys, faculty lounge partners, toys.com
Faculty Lounge Partners has to be a domainer or group of domainers. What state did they incorporate in?
I wonder if John Berryhill was there representing a couple of his larger clients?
John lives only a few miles away from that law firm.
Ari also lives a few miles away from that law firm.
Domain detective.
New profession, Andrew?
Nice digging.
A reader just pointed this out about Faculty Lounge:
http://whois.domaintools.com/directnavigation.com
Same address as on asset purchase agreement. So it looks like Larry & Ari
So why didnt anyone besides 4-5 parties know about this auction? I think its strange.
Most knew Ari and Larry were behind Faculty Lounge.
However, they also act as purchasing agents for a few of Ari’s larger clients. One such client is Anything.com.
The evidence points that way but I would not jump to conclusions, yet.
Congratulations to whomever ends up with a few of them. They are winners.
@ Ricardo – Ari emailed me and confirmed that he placed a qualified bid on behalf of Faculty Lounge. The documents show that he is a partner in Faculty Lounge.
The largest toy retailer in the US is Wal-Mart. The customer list alone is worth $1M.
http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2009/02/12/ap6046696.html
[...] was fairly clear that Eagle, LLC was connected to Toys ‘R’ Us during the eToys bankruptcy auctions. Toys ‘R’ Us confirmed the suspicion today in an [...]
Thanks Toygiant. Just pubbed a follow up article.
[...] had perhaps Googled “Toys R Us eToys”, they would have found Domain Name Wire’s article about the purchase (it was on the first page at the time). That article linked to the other article [...]
[...] In addition to the DONE! Ventures deal, the judge earlier approved Toys ‘R’ Us purchase of a number of brands and intellectual property for $2.15M. [...]
[...] February 6, 2009: Based on tips from multiple sources, DNW suggests that the buyer of eToys.com and related properties is Toys ‘R’ Us, which attended the auction as “Eagle LLC”. [...]
[...] Goldberger on Toys.com Team, eToys.com Buyer Remains Mystery I spent several hours yesterday reading through bankruptcy documents before breaking the news about a major domain name auction in Delaware on February 4. Since then I’ve read more documents to try to piece together the major winners at the auction. The two high profile winners — Faculty Lounge Partners and Eagle, LLC probably won’t ring a bell with you. It appears they were set up to buy domains in the auction. There’s a familiar name on the Faculty Lounge Partners purchase documents for Toys.com: Ari Goldberger. I have sent an e-mail to the domain name attorney by the same name to confirm his involvement and will update this story later. You can see the initial qualified bid document submitted before the auction here . More… [...]