It’s a bit surprising that this high-flying company and its billionaire founder use a subpar domain.
What is the hottest business in today’s market? Vaccines. That’s how Kong Wei became a newly minted billionaire when his vaccine company was listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange on June 25.
According to Forbes, Kong’s 25% stake in Changchun BCHT Biotechnology just made him worth about $2 billion.
The company’s brand is BCHT, which is clear when you visit its corporate domain BCHTpharm.com. (Like many Chinese companies, you’ll need to type in WWW to get the site to resolve.) Although not explicitly stated, BCHT is probably the acronym for “Baike Changchun High&New Technology“.
Now, does BCHTpharm.com look cheap to you? If major Chinese companies such as Jing Dong, BYD, and DFAC can be found at JD.com, BYD.com, and DFAC.com, respectively, where should we expect to find BCHT? At BCHT.com, of course.
BCHT.com was registered in 1999 and is currently parked. Therefore, it is highly likely that the domain can be acquired at a price. Interestingly, BCHT .cn is for sale, and even BCHTpharm .cn may be available.
While BCHT is their official brand, the company is known as Bai Ke (百克 = overcome hundred times) in China. A Baidu search also confirms the use of this Chinese brand. Unfortunately, the matching Baike.com (百科 = encyclopedic) is an encyclopedia website owned by ByteDance (the same company which owns TikTok). This means acquiring Baike.com is almost impossible.
As domain investors, what are some takeaways?
- Many corporate executives in China still do not understand the importance of brand-matching domains. For domain investors, there are still many opportunities to sell domains as upgrades to these Chinese companies.
- Corporate China loves .com.
- .cn is second place and optional. BCHT does not bother to secure BCHT.cn and BCHTpharm.cn even though they are still available. This also happens to many of the largest companies such as SAIC Motor, China Railway, and Greenland Group when their matching .cn can still be acquired.
It is important to do your research to uncover potential buyers for your domains as upgrades. For example, if you were the owner of BCHT.com, you would be able to discover this vaccine company using tools such as Crunchbase, dotDB, and search engines.
How about didi.com? crazies.
An article on this domain coming…
I wonder if they’re aware that .online is the next best thing to .com☺
The answer is probably no, because corporate China is too focused on .com
The biggest takeaway is that many big companies are not very fussed about domains.
Good observation! That’s why I always say we are still in the early stage of the domain industry, even though it’s been more than 35 years since the first domains were released.
Okay. Without that company there, what would that typical 4 letter dot com be worth? The same as your typical 4 letter dot com, 4 figures or 5 at best – some rare ones higher, crappy ones lower. The customers of BCHT Biotechnology can already find the company, and even new customers can do it easily too. So ask yourself… does BCHT need to pay the (no doubt) extortionist $millions for that domain because someone wants to extract $$$ from a large company? No. I too would tell that domain owner (if the asking price was excessive) to keep holding that valuable domain forever.
Another thing to consider: BCHT.com tells me nothing, while BCHTpharm.com tells me immediately it’s in the pharmaceutical industry and it’s the right company I’m after. IMO that’s important even for westerners, but I think it might be even more relevant for Chinese customers.
I don’t think this is a good and clear cut example of why a company should “upgrade” their domain.
By the same token, did Elon Musk need to pay $11 million in 2016 to acquire Tesla.com when he already had TeslaMotors.com?
There was a time high-flying McDs had no interest in acquiring there domain.
OK, it was 1994. But fun piece to read in 2021.
“. . . a reporter named Joshua Quittner bought mcdonalds.com for a story he was writing for Wired about the value of domain names. But nobody at McDonald’s seemed to have any interest in being online. . .
Quittner eventually agreed to hand over the name to McDonald’s if the company made a donation to a charitable cause of his choice — $3,500 to a public school in Brooklyn for computers and internet access.”
5 Domain Name Battles of the Early Web
https://gizmodo.com/5-domain-name-battles-of-the-early-web-1660616980
Thanks MG for bring back the old memory. It was a time when most people in the world had no idea about domains.