Company has owned the domain name since the 90s.
Tennessee guitar company Gruhn Guitars has moved its website from Gruhn.com to the valuable domain name Guitars.com.
This isn’t a case of a company paying big bucks for a great domain — it’s about a company finally getting around to leveraging an asset is has owned for more than a decade.
The Nashville Business Journal reports that Gruhn registered the domain name in the late 90s.
It has forwarded traffic from Guitars.com to its main site at Gruhn.com. It has also promoted Guitars.com in some marketing material, but now it is taking a bigger step: its site is now hosted at Guitars.com and Gruhn.com forwards to Guitars.com.
A company representative notes that people will connect with the Gruhn brand, so it’s important to maintain that even while using the Guitars.com domain name.
Over the years, the company has turned down many five figure offers for the domain names. (It’s surely worth a strong six figure number.)
Joseph Peterson says
Bravo!
todd says
Go figure. The company that registers the domain is not Gibson, Taylor, or Fender but a small Mom and Pop store in Nashville Tennessee. Probably didn’t even realize how powerful of a name they had until some internet guy said, “You own Guitars.com? Sit down and let me tell you about the power of the internet”
Matt says
Smart move. Great investment. Congrats to both the buyer (and seller).
Kassey says
For a small company, branding to a generic name may be a good idea, as most people can remember a product-specific domain name. However, once you grow to a larger size, your corporate identity may become an issue, as shown in the rebranding story of Wayfair. The company used to operate over 200 successful product sites such as Luggage.com, Upholstery.com, and Strollers.com. With 5 million customers and $400 million in total sales, it faced the problem of having no main brand recognition. Consumers might have done business with more than one related website, but they probably wouldn’t know the company behind. In 2012, the company rebranded under Wayfair and had all sites redirect to Wayfair.com.
Joseph Peterson says
You make a good point, Kassey. Centralized branding can be important. Still, it’s those product-specific domains that made Wayfair, the business, what it is.
Andrew Allemann says
I think Wayfair’s decision may have been prompted by declining search rankings for its niche sites thank to Google algorithm changes.
My God... says
Let me understand one thing please. They had a domain like that and even if they are essentially a little “unknown” store they didn’t use a domain like that for almost 20 years?!? :)))
What do you think? Few money leaved on the table here?!? :)))) Oh my God…