Zappos bought domain name, Clothes.com for $4.9 million

[Vision]

This news discovered by super sleuth, George Kirikos --

When Amazon Bought Zappos, Clothes.com Also Came In The Box

by Erick Schonfeld on August 7, 2009

When Amazon paid $928 million for Zappos in July, it got a little something extra in the box: the Clothes.com domain. It turns out that Zappos bought the domain last year from Idealab for $4.9 million (Bill Gross strikes again).

The detail is tucked away in Amazon’s SEC filing about its acquisition of Zappos:

In May 2008, we acquired the Clothes.com internet domain name from Idealab. The domain name was recognized as a purchased intangible asset with a useful life of 20 years. The entire purchase price of $4.9 million was assigned to the price of the domain name intangible asset and will be amortized on a straight-line basis over its remaining estimated useful life.

The “we” in that sentence is Zappos (now Amazon). At $4.9 million, the Clothes.com sale would have been the second largest reported domain-name transaction in 2008 after Fund.com ($10 million), and the second biggest one so far this year after Toys.com ($5.1 million).

The Clothes.com URL goes to a Zappos landing page with a clothing product smackdown. Zappos is primarily known as an online shoe retailer, but sells clothing as well. Such a large investment, however, suggests that Zappos may have had plans to branch out more aggressively into clothing, perhaps under the Clothes.com domain. (Thanks to reader George Kirikos for the tip).

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/08/07/when-amazon-bought-zappos-clothescom-also-came-in-the-box/

 

[Sonny Banks]

Super fantastic domain and super fantastic sale!
One of my favourite domains in the world.

 

[nameadvertising.com]

I own clothes.com in Indian. Now where is my end user???????

Show up already! A billion plus people need it.

 

[katherine]

Thanks Michael

 

[Ervin]

I hope I can make a million sales in future.