OnlineDomain.com Domain Name News & Opinions
Rolex bought 27 domain names on the 4th day of the Donuts Early Access Program (EAP) for the New gTLD .watch last week. Of course .watch would be top priority for a watch company such as Rolex. I am not sure if these are all names from Rolex watches.
Each domain had a price of about $700 as I am not sure what the EAP day 4 price is at mailclub.com (the registrar Rolex used) and if any of the domains were marked as premium by Donuts. Rolex paid about
$19,000 or more total for these 27 domains.
Here is the list of the 27 domain names that Rolex bought on the 3rd of May:
deepsea.watch
oyster.watch
oysterperpetual.watch
sky-dweller.watch
prince.watch
datejust.watch
cosmograph.watch
heritage.watch
pelagos.watch
day-date.watch
pearlmaster.watch
yacht-master.watch
air-king.watch
advisor.watch
sea-dweller.watch
glamour.watch
grantour.watch
gmt-master.watch
clairderose.watch
explorer.watch
fastrider.watch
cellini.watch
blackshield.watch
submariner.watch
blackbay.watch
ranger.watch
milgauss.watch
Rolex didn’t purchase the non-hyphenated versions of the 5 hyphenated domains from above. All are still available to register:
skydweller.watch
daydate.watch
airking.watch
seadweller.watch
gmtmaster.watch
Sometimes these “brand protection” companies completely loose track of what is important to register and what’s not.
Rolex also bought the domain name tudorwatch.watch at Sunrise. They also have a DPML block on the term “tudor” which prevents anyone without a trademark on the term “tudor” buying any New gTLD domain from the 200 to 300 Donuts strings. Interestingly enough they didn’t register/activate tudor.watch and that is maybe because they don’t intent on using any of these domains and are only buying them for brand protection.
About the cost of one decent Rolex watch, it is surprising how bad management is at some companies, nobody was going to register those names, and even if they did, they had recourse, as well as who would pay such a hefty annual fee other than the actual company.
Another tranche of names bought by a marketing department with more money than sense and no idea what to do with them other than to nullify their potential effectiveness. I’d bet a Rolex none of them see real usage.
If they merely put landing pages or redirects on all of those pages and sell one watch because of it, they have paid for the exercise. Give it 5 years before the heavy armchair quarterbacking guys. I think the management and marketing of Rolex has proved worthy of the benefit of the doubt.