Want to eliminate confusion? Get your brand .com first or bleed out!

Organize-It, a Michigan-based online retailer, bought the domain name and website OrganizeIt-Online.com from a California-based retailer with the same name. Both companies are storage and organizational products retailers.

With this new domain/website purchase, Organize-It expands its online presence to three domains. Organize-It already owns and operates OrganizeIt.com and Organization-Store.com.

Originally based in the greater Sacramento, California area, OrganizeIt-Online.com began as a traditional brick and mortar store in 1988 that specialized in custom closet and garage design. It would later expand to become an online retailer but has decided to shut down as of January 1, 2014. Because both Organize-It brands were part of the same trade group (Storage Sources Group) and the owners knew each other professionally, the OrganizeIt-Online.com domain was offered to Organize-It.

“The purchase was a no-brainer and a great opportunity to expand our online reach,” says Organize-It’s General Manager Chris Nylen. “Our customer service department would often receive phone calls from individuals who thought they were contacting OrganizeIt-Online, so eliminating that confusion was yet another purchase perk,” adds Nylen.

The California company was founded in 1988 but failed to buy the corresponding domain name until in 1997 a Michigan company with the same name was founded and bought OrganizeIt.com. The California retailer then bought OrganizeIt-Online.com in 2004 but it was already too late and their online store was doomed. If people often called the wrong company then a lot more people were visiting OrganizeIt.com looking for OrganizeIt-Online.com. The California retailer kept losing customers to OrganizeIt.com and this bleed probably led to its shut down.

Lesson learned. Get the corresponding .com domain name for your brand or at least the best domain name you can or suffer the consequences.