End User for Recent Major .Online Sales

As I pointed out recently, there has been momentum in .online extension domain name sales this year.  In today's post I look at who made two of the recent major purchases in the extension and why the acquisitions are a good fit for the company.

The Sales

On Sept 20, 2018 the domain name king.online sold for $17,250 on Sedo. A few days later the domain name design.online sold for $57,500, also on Sedo. The design sale makes the top 10 list of new global top level domain (ngTLD) sales in 2018 YTD at time of writing. I am not completely sure, but using https://web.archive.org it appears that the names were sold through Sedo by the  Radix registry as premium names.

The End User

I see that both domains are now redirecting to the website of King Living, an Australian headquartered furniture business that started in 1977. The company currently operates from a com.au domain name. The company started with the name King Furniture.  They have over the years been early adopters of a number of innovations including steel frames, use of foam in cushions, removable covers, and modular designs.  They have won a number of awards for their designs. They currently operate showrooms in Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia and Singapore. Their expansion plans include a Vancouver, BC, Canada showroom that will open in the coming year.  You can read more about the company here or directly on the history section of the company's website.

Discussion

Now that the company operates well beyond Australia, and has further expansion plans, I think rebranding to a truly global top level domain makes sense.  Undoubtedly they would have liked king.com, but that is the website for King, a major UK based video game maker - you quite probably have used their products, as they make the Candy Crush line!

The fact that King Living selected the .online extension tells me that they see expansion through online shopping. The .online extension has a number of things going for it.  It is one of the top 10 new extensions, both in terms of registrations and  actual use in Alexa 1M websites. About 1 in every 500 registrations make the Alexa 1M, almost as high as .com. The extension has excellent lack of abuse statistics - on day of writing with a score of 0.56 it is tied with .com.  It will be interesting to see if King Living plan to use these names always for redirection or if eventually their main web presence will migrate to them.

There are a number of other extensions that would have made sense for the company, such as king.life or king.design.  The first is available for sale currently by a Chinese domain name investor.  I suspect they selected .online either because acquisition was easier, or because it is more well known by the general public. I do not know if the company has other ngTLD acquisition plans.

I congratulate the company on these digital asset acquisitions.  For Radix, it is good news to have another major company with a long and distinguished history choosing to brand using one of their extensions.

Original post Oct 4, 2018.

Fine Print

This post is offered for informational and educational purposes only, and should not be considered domain name investment advice. While an attempt has been made to be accurate, there is no implied or explicit warranty, and you are responsible for verifying any information of importance to you. You also accept full responsibility for any domain investing decisions you may make. I have no association with the folks who maintain NameBio or NameStat databases. I acknowledge the makers of these for the valuable products that they make freely available to the domain name community. I have no association with the company mentioned in this post.

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