Privately-owned PriveCo, which specializes in retailing “embarrassing” products online, has paid $1 million for the acquisition of the domain name vibrators.com (a little NSFW).
PriveCo began selling private things out of a spare bedroom on a website called ShopInPrivate.com back in 1998, and has steadily grown to an operation with 12 separate retail sites whose warehouse ships 1500+ packages per week.
This is how they justify the price of the domain name:
- It is an instantly recognizable name,
- Tied to products that people want to buy in complete privacy
- Customers will value PriveCo’s policies and services
- Competitor websites lack professionalism and tact
- PriveCo has strong experience in this field
DomainNameNews spoke to PriveCo President Tom Nardone on the phone and got hold of the exact details of the transaction:
Priveco has closed on the deal to buy the domain outright, but whois ownership has not changed because the current owner is financing the deal. Priveco made a six-figure down-payment on the domain name and will be paying the rest off over the next few years with an 8% interest rate.
Update - We also got in touch with Nardone, and he specified: the deal was $200k down and 800k at 8% over a fairly short term. Transfer will be done just before the end.
Either way, $1 million is a lot of money, especially in these troubled economic times. What speaks for the company, however, is that they’re bound to know exactly how valuable it is: PriveCo has been running Vibrators.com since 2002, essentially leasing the domain from someone else. The domain is currently registered to Vibesales in Jonesboro, Arizona, but Nardone says he bought the domain from an individual, not a company.
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They are going to make a fortune! Nothing like a good back massage on a dark dreary afternoon to lift the old spirits!;)lol
Great DEAL! Congrats! and on what platform they sold it?! TS
Two thumbs up!
Or two fingers. Much cheaper than a vibrator.
LOL.
Smart. If they bought it, it means it’s worth buying it than leasing - and is not at all surprising in the current economic setting, when people go out less and less and try to save money staying at home, they’re bound to be looking into, umm… “alternatives”
lady on the picture is fat!!! — Look at those thighs!!!!
thats why she needs a vibrator, if she was good looking she could get the real thing..
thank you for the confirmation. Who knew the value of these natural language properties.
WhoLocator.com-i rest my case.
Stop the SPAM!
Your domains aren’t natural language properties, though.
Natural language examples:
Shit.com
Computer.com
Phone.com
IT.com
not WhatEverYouCanThinkOf.com
your domains if you tried to sell them are only worth $8 each if you are lucky
I found it strange that my grocery store was displaying back massagers on the end of one of the aisles. People must be really stressed in these times! or there are a lot of lonely college girls in my town.
Congrats to them. Not seeing what’s “embarrassing” about their products, i.e. vibrators or other sex toys though.
Sex is perfectly natural, and a good, happy sex life is crucial for a happy, harmonious relationship.
Have an awesome day!
Dan
business must be “humming”
I would have switched to vibrrrrrators.com and saved myself $999,990. But man, who knew the market for that stuff is so huge? Guys, y’all gotta step up and keep the ladies happy…
Let’s see. Assuming a normal 2-speed, rechargeable vibrator goes for $40 (I really have no idea), and the gross margin is $19, apply about $1 for fixed expenses and you have $20 of pre-tax profit per device (see how that rounded out so nicely).
Assuming there are 130M women in the U.S. of the right age to indulge themselves, and 25% buy at least 1 every 3 years, then the market for vibrators in the U.S. annually is (forget International for a moment) a little over 10M vibrators per year.
If they can get 20% of this market using good SEO stories and such, then they are looking at revenue of $80M per year and $40M of pre-tax profit! Wow!!! That doesn’t include “Vibrators for Dummies” book sales or “My Wife Bought a Vibrator and All I Got Was this Dumb T-Shirt” shirt sales and other related paraphanelia. These guys are onto something that would get anyone off.
those are a lot of assumptions, but thanks for the helpful calculation
a belated remark:
there is no way that they will get 20% of the market, but some of the other assumptions are way low.
what’s all the buzz about?
How do they come up with that figure? What determines whether a domain name is worth $5 or $5 Million?
Craig
http://www.budgetpulse.com
oh boy…you’re in the wrong industry my friend.
The two people on either side of the check.
hmm.. is there an iphone apps to that enables it to continuously vibrate?
It is coming… [no pun intended]
Talk about getting alot of bang for you buck . . . but seriously, like booze and movies, I suspect the joy/$ ratio makes vibrators somewhat recession proof.
Come on TC, get the moderators of their ass and delete these posts…
no sense of humor…
his monkey must be tired of all that spanking
The link you have is quitspammingforumposts.com, but this is a blog… might want to update that domain to quitspammingblogposts.com
http://QuitSpammingForumPosts.com
Wow, a good way to spend money…while the word suffers money wise, other use money to get a quick fix.
Robin we also got the transaction details in the convo with Tom. I just felt an obligation to give some privacy on the specifics but I guess he was ok with the release of the details after all.
Thanks for following up on the buzz.
This site only has a Google page rank of 2….They will have to spend alot of money on advertising to get customers.
Just because they have a good domain name, doesn’t mean it will make money. Its a very competitive business.
SexToy Dave was on Bravo’s TV program the “Millionaire Matchmaker” and he claimed he had $6 million in revenue from his site. (I guess he’ll be on season 2, not too many women want to date a guy that sells $6 mln worth of sex toys.)
Jonesboro Arizona??? Is that a real city? I’ve traveled all over AZ and I’ve never seen Jonesboro…
vibratrs.com for web2.0 winz
I would add that while the nominal cost is 1 million, the real cost is 1,173,000 factoring in the cost of borrowing, approx 18% more than advertised.
Lots of money getting thrown at quality domain names. Check out our Copies.com domain for sale. We will be putting it up for auction shortly.
Stop SPAMMING your lame domain name every opportunity you get. Besides, the word “copies” has a VERY search frequency among web surfers, and is not nearly as valuable as you probably think it is.
whoever calls them vibrator anymore? Even more discreet and classier society that we are becoming, aren’t they increasingly called “massager” now a days
Sex sells!
Btw
Check out http://www.jobstaxi.com
New Jobs. Nixon Inc.. oDesk. Rockstar New England. FixYa. Snap. Gorilla Nation.
should be a feature on women and their gadgets.
Consoladores or vibradores in spanish?
hi\
Its a billion dollar industry so the sale is not very surprising to me. Its interesting that they initially rented and decided to buy the domain later..
Yes, “Massager” is the more private & popular term for “Vibrator” but the asking price of Massager.com that the owner set is a ridiculous $370k and no wonder its not sold yet! Unless some company rents it from them and later decides to buy (like in the case of vibrators domain), I don’t see it selling for this high amount. May be 150k. Probably even less.
Just goes to prove that majority of domain owners need to really understand the market value of a domain and not to get personally attached and have over high expections..
Vibrators.com selling for one million is a good buy, they should make it all back in no time. Now if I could only find a buyer for my domain WebVibrators.com
Should have ended with a .org