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Just
yesterday,
in our latest weekly domain
sales report, I told you about
the first two 7-figure domain sales
reported this year - Whisky.com at $3.1
million and Youxi.com
("games" in Chinese) at CNY
15 million which equals $2,430,000
at current exchange rates (in case you
missed it, the remarkable full story of the
Whisky.com sale by the Castello
Brothers is detailed in our
current Cover
Story). |
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Now,
less than 24 hours later, we have
confirmed a third blockbuster
7-figure sale. A Chinese maker of browser
based games, 37Wan, announced they
purchased 37.com for CNY 12
million, which comes to $1,960,800
as of this writing (the seller is believed
to be a U.S. company incorporated in
Delaware that holds many other prime
numeric domain names). |
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Our
Asian market expert, George Hong, spotted the first
report of the sale today on Chinese news
site Sohu.com, who noted that the
purchase price is a drop in the bucket for 37Wan
as the company is believed to have earned a
profit of around $36 million in
2013. Hong
then located a much more detailed follow up report
at another popular Chinese news site, EEYY.com,
complete with photos from a celebratory
"brand launch" press conference
hosted by 37Wan co-founders, Mr. Li Yifei
and Mr. Zeng Kaitian, that also
featured a number of Chinese movie stars. Mr.
Yifei
said that upgrading the company's domain from
37Wan.com to 37.com was important for several
reasons (the word "wan" means play
in Chinese). One, it is easier to remember
and thus easier for new players to find on the
web. Two, the company is expanding into global
markets and 37wan.com would not have been
easily understood by international audience. And
three, they noted the greater success two other
Chinese companies, JD.com and VIP.com,
achieved after upgrading to those short
acronyms, further encouraging them to change the name
to
37.com.
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George
Hong |
One
other note, if you are a regular reader
you have been seeing Mr. Hong's name in
our reports frequently since George (who
is originally from China), started helping
us uncover and confirm domain sales in the
rapidly growing Asian market. For those of
you who do not already know him, George is
the
President and CEO of premium domain brokerage
company Guta.com.
George is also a math whiz, holding both bachelors
and masters degrees in
mathematics. He
also passed his PhD qualifying exam
before the growth of the Internet caught
his attention and prompted him to switch
to IT and domains. Math's loss and our
gain! |
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