Canadian shoe seller shutters online stores including Shoes.com.
Shoes.com, part of a company that also operates OnlineShoes.com and ShoeME.ca, has gone out of business. All three sites shut down today.
The Canadian firm acquired Shoes.com from Brown Shoe Co in 2014. It was more than just a domain name; it was an operating business.
A Business Vancouver article speculates that the company was facing pressure from Amazon and Walmart. Walmart bought ShoeBuy.com earlier this year.
The closure and likely liquidation means that the Shoes.com domain name might be available for purchase soon.
Welcome to the “Winner take all” society. Two thoughts:
1. Defendable niches are getting harder to find and sustain. If you find one, it pays to not to talk too much about it, while keeping low overhead.
2. Exact match domains are not what they once were. A memorable brand name is not a free pass for customer service or supply chain.
That said, if anyone knows more about this story, hopefully they will share it on this thread, as sometimes it is just personal circumstance, and not dire.
“Exact match domains are not what they once were”
That may be true. However, I don’t think we can draw any conclusions at all from the failure of a business built on a premium domain.
If I crash a Porsche, that doesn’t prove the Porsche was a bad car. Trust me: I can crash anything.
Your car rental insurance just skyrocketed… 😉
Uh oh
You don’t need to worry about paying car insurance if you can afford a Porsche.
I’m guessing this is a no brainer. Get Jeff or Nick on the phone 🙂
Also makes me wonder how many other great shorts might be affected by
large platforms, but don’t leave out Zappos. They were probably the biggest mountain to climb.
Cheers
These type of names used to be category killers, but not anymore. People want to deal with real brands now and a generic domain comes across as just another store.
Without information, we can not deduce anything, it can be a change of strategy, it can be an economic breakdown, etc, etc …
In 2008 it was affected GM and Ford and Embergadura banks, conclusion all markets must adapt, the domain name in these circumstances is not even 1%. The problems are of another nature. For ex. If you read, you know that China’s industry has problems, that we read all the time, however this US or Europe or in South America everything I see says made in china, then how are the other countries ???. We also talked about the decline of the CHIP and it turns out that china is left with the portfolio of 2-letter domains.
All the information that is supplied is not able in certain way to really understand what happens, are there correlations? yes. Are there relationships ?? We do not know-
Without a doubt that this domain SHOES.com is worth $ 1M and $ 2M independent of all its analysis, since behind this small name there is one of the biggest industries of the world, until the petroleum falls short, many industries will succumb but No one will stop wearing their hiking shoes that is for sure.
Shoes.com is for selling shoes.
Do people want to buy shoes online?
The business must match the domain. Some great product domains, must have bricks and mortar stores. If the product must be fitted, or is difficult to ship it might need a bricks and mortar store.
Some domains like TENT.com are suited for the Internet. Tents are easy to ship and most stores that sell tents do not stock all items, so TENTS and difficult to find.
TENT.com could also be used for a non camping brand, like insurance etc.
Domains like eTutoring.com would be for online tutoring only, It is cool because the site only needs to be a platform for independent tutors
I am looking for development partners for TENT.com, and eTutoring.com and other domains. They would receive 80% of the revenue for development and management until the development is recouped, and 40% of the revenue for management after the development is recouped. Development would need to be recouped in 3 years.
Development would not have any equity, and the agreement would be initially for 3 years.
Peter
They could build off any domain, and keep 100 percent of the money.
This shoes.com
Person sold their company for $432 million back in 2014 clearly contacts, they tried the same business model for
Shoes, it did not execute as planned.
Clearly shoes are not as generic as contacts, and you need a massive supply chain, and shipping is expensive.
They would probably still be in business if they didn’t drop Ivanka Trump’s shoes. Less than 2 months after dropping her brand they are out of business.
The power of Trump. LOL
http://www.businessinsider.com/shoescom-ditches-ivanka-trump-shoe-line-2016-11
Shoulds like a marketing ploy to get attention and find an audience. It failed.
I agree with much of what Robert Monster wrote.
Shoes.com is not indicative of generic domain names going soft. The industry is still in a attriction war of survival. There is a great reservoir of opportunity for small businesses that is waiting drastic change. Be it trade wars, the new administration’s anti-trust ambitions or some other dynamic shift, the major companies that have taken so much market share will have to allow for economic balance. There are too many people depending on it.
The stock market may be at 20,000 but major changes are coming. Large corporations need stability and are slow and lumbering in their ability to quickly react to change. That allows for small unencumbered businesses to take advantage.
It is important that we wait out the next three months to see what patterns of opportunity play out. Then we will know a lot more of what’s in store for our future.
> “A memorable brand name is not a free pass for customer service or supply chain.”
Indeed. Big nearby case in point: just look at the beating “Escrow.com” just over two weeks ago: https://domainnamewire.com/2017/01/12/want-use-escrow-com-prepare-verified/#comments. There is no better domain in all the world for escrow than “escrow.com,” and I’m confident many of us are sad how things have gone to even be able to feel such things about it. Personally I never thought it could happen in a million years as the saying goes.
@John – On the escrow topic, as I have commented elsewhere, I have a certain empathy there. The sad story is that a few really clever bad apples are creating elevated transaction risk for escrow agents. As for the response, I believe Draconian blanket measures are not the way to go. Although it takes more effort, ultimately great companies must attempt to respect individuals. Weaker companies implement hard policies resulting in the disenfranchisement of persons who deserve better. The frameworks for portable reputation on the Internet are being put into operation. In addition to running Epik, the other company that I lead, called DigitalTown, is working to solve exactly this issue as part of the rollout of a Global Smart City network. The DigitalTown Smart Wallet, including portable identity / reputation, is an integral part of a scalable framework for more frictionless global commerce.
Rob, what did you think about Matt Mullenweg’s response to your question about verified identity?
@Andrew
Matt’s comments were more or less what I expected. He appears to be advocating a “laissez faire” model, letting the market decide what works best. That being said, the Wordpress free market model is far from flawless. Wordpress sites are among the most frequently hacked. Contrast that with mobile app stores where apps are submitted for review prior being added to the marketplace.
I think the solution that makes sense is to integrate a SSO solution that they have vetted into Jetpack. This does not preclude developers from using other SSO solutions but it would systematically solve many issues that remains unsolved today with Wordpress sites, namely (1) the inability to connect comments across sites to a persistent user identity, (2) the inability sort comments by reputation, and (3) the inability for comment authors to edit or redact their own comments.
What goes for comments also goes for commerce. For example, when a customer makes a purchase on a site powered by Woo Commerce, once again each time they are creating a new stand-alone account and re-keying personal information and payment methods. This makes no sense. It should be possible to login with a cloud-based wallet that Woo Commerce has vetted, for example.
Sounds great, Rob, looking forward to checking that out.
> “A memorable brand name is not a free pass for customer service or supply chain.”
Indeed. Big nearby case in point: just look at the beating “Escrow.com” took just over two weeks ago: http : // domainnamewire . com/2017/01/12/want-use-escrow-com-prepare-verified/#comments. There is no better domain in all the world for escrow than “escrow.com,” and I’m confident many of us are sad how things have gone and to even be able to feel such things about it. Personally I never thought it could happen in a million years as the saying goes.
i think the thing is that any business can fail just having a great domain name isn’t a guarantee of success.
shoesdotcom is a 5th avenue address, it may be a little scarred after the business failure but a new owner could easily improve its image
the reality of online business is that if you want to sell something that amazon is selling you need to have a great plan
Anyone who had gone to the site could see (excuse the pun) it lacked any sole.
some words \ terms are becoming globally generic sex- cyber -baby – show? IoT? I wonder what an Asian group would do with Shoe “com” The West is a dot on the landscape. I like CyberAnquan (com) as an example of a future generic (not mine) Anquan = security, even leaving marketing aside AI will be about the root domain or cognitive brand for some time to come
so what happens if we need to return a pair, or we out of luck? I just purchased a pair two weeks ago and received them, they do not fit. Will I still be charged?
Not sure how it works in Canada, but you might try doing a chargeback on your credit card.