Toys ‘R’ Us, Frank Schilling Among Bidders to Pay $1.35M or More for Toys.com
Thursday, February 26th, 2009
6 companies to bid in Friday’s Toys.com auction.
In a review of qualified bid documents, Domain Name Wire has discovered some familiar faces in Friday’s auction of Toys.com: Frank Schilling, National A-1 Advertising, and Toys ‘R’ Us to name a few. It’s clear that the press coverage of the original auction brought more bidders out of the woodwork.
Most of the bidders submitted an initial bid of $1.35M, as I predicted. But it’s clear the auction will go much higher than that. Bidders include:
1-800-Diapers
Toys ‘R’ Us via Eagle, LLC
National A-1
Schilling Aviation Corp (Frank Schilling)
Socha APA David William Socha
Faculty Lounge Partners
Faculty Lounge Partners won the initial auction and will be the “stalking horse” bidder in this auction.
It’s interesting to see Frank Schilling bid through a company other than Name Administration Corp. Perhaps its the size of this deal that requires a separate corporate entity.
Also, some bidders made massive deposits or escrow payments, despite only a 10% deposit required. National A-1 Advertising plunked down $1.5M, Socha deposited $0.5M.
I’ll do my best to provide a final auction result as soon as its available.
Related posts:
- Toys ‘R’ Us Buys Toys.com Domain Name for $5.1M
- Court Approves Toys.com Sale
- Toys.com To Be Auctioned February 27
Tags: Frank Schilling, national a-1 advertising, toys 'r' us, toys.com
Nice to know,
I’m confident toys r us will get it
Will check back and see.
Nicely done.
Everytime I hear someone brag about how much another TLD sells for, something like this comes along and puts everything right back in perspective.
The possibility of a domain company outbidding the end user is an interesting scenario.
Well, toys ‘r’ us was in the original auction and didn’t outbid faculty lounge. I was surprised to see them back in it. One thought is they made a deal in the last auction that they would bid on the etoys.com and faculty lounge would walk away with toys.com.
Frank Schilling… you get em!
Or, maybe the publicity of this thing caught the attention of the powers-that-be at Toys R Us, and the mgmt said ‘why the #$%& don’t we own that name’. Hopefully they’ll be a stronger bidder this time around.
So, is the law firm or whoever screwed this up the first time around (by not publicizing it) essentially getting to double-bill (2nd auction process) thanks to their own screw-up?
I think Frank will take it.
He has a real understanding of the true value of the name.
-Mike
“So, is the law firm or whoever screwed this up the first time around (by not publicizing it) essentially getting to double-bill (2nd auction process) thanks to their own screw-up?”
Probably.
My prediction:
Frank .S wins at the final price of $3 million.
Check back and you will see iam right.
I got my money on a1
Definitely some serious players. Socha owns a toy company with tens of millions in revenues, Schilling is a force to be reckoned with but A-1 has the pure power of adult website cashflow not to mention Ari and Toys r us and 1-800-Diapers. Can’t wait to see who wins!!
Sochas website?
As soon as someone buys it, it’s an instant revenue generating business.
Not just a great name that sold for over $1m
I dont have stats or time to look for any proof but the traffic on this must be substantial.
I’d like to say about 40% of the value is based of the traffic.
Which i’m sure the buyers will be aware of.
I must have thought toys r us was the higest bidder last time, my mistake.
still would be nice to see a name go to someone who will develop it or atleats point it to a business
cant take much more parked pages
j/k
The final price will be 8 figures if two end users decide they really want it. For someone like 1-800-diapers it makes perfect sense. Their online brand is diapers.com and they already have the database of parents who shop online; why not also sell toys to them.
David Socha is featured in this article:
http://www.entrepreneur.com/magazine/entrepreneur/2003/november/65006-3.html
@ Johnny – 1-800-diapers was in the original auction too.
both toys r us and amazon were in the auction before and didn’t bid up… these are multi multi billion dollar companies
if anybody can make the domain work, it is one of those two
but no, it won’t pass $2m in my opinion
i say Toys R Us comes out on top at MAXIMUM of $2m
Based on its deposit, National A-1 is willing to pay at least 1.5M. I suspect they’ll go much higher, as they actually only bid 1.35M. They wouldn’t want to give away the cards on how much they’ll bid, but wanted to make a statement.
opening new bid will be $2mill I bet.
Shilling at $3mm
Schilling 4.2 million
it will go high
in this economic crisis… its amazing that names are selling for 7 figures
Those who don’t already have a famous brand in this field (like domainers) probably have an advantage here, because even though there are some major companies involved here, but some of them have to be careful how high they go on this domain name before the news of the sale starts affecting their existing brand, perhaps that’s why some of them went out of their way to keep things private at the beginning.
Most companies like to own the category defining domains that are related to their field, but they rather keep things under wraps because although they like to benefit form the traffic that the top generic domains provide, but they don’t want people to start associating their company with those domains because overtime that can weaken their brand. So next time a company wants to buy a generic domain it might be better for the domain industry in the long run if the buyers are not put under the spotlight. Some companies might actually be willing to pay a lot more for the top generic domains if they could keep their purchase private. IMO
I’ve got this domain topping 5 million. 5.5 to be exact.
what time today does this take place?
2 pm est
thanks, keep us posted!
Larry, I assume you’ll be there…aren’t you involved with Faculty Partners? Please keep us posted.
I hope Frank wins. I feel that if Frank takes it this will help further legitimize domainers. Let the world know we are serious and we are not all just out typo-squatting and so on….
7 mins!
current bid is 2.9 million from national A-1. i will update at DirectNavigation.com as bidding occurs. Bidding goes very slowly.
nice, thanks
[...] included domain investors Frank Schilling as well as Larry Fischer and Ari Goldberg who were the previous stalking horse [...]
[...] to Domain Name Wire, the following bidders participated in the [...]
[...] the winner, Toys”R”us, back-up bidder National A1 Advertising, domain investors Frank Schilling as well as Larry Fischer and Ari Goldberg who were the previous stalking horse [...]