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Shopify Inc. has scooped up a pair of web domains from a smaller Canadian e-commerce participant for greater than $500,000, because it continues to construct out a web-based platform below the “Store” banner.
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EMERGE Commerce Ltd. introduced Jan. 6 that it bought the domains Store.ca and Store.us to Canada’s largest tech firm. The URLs now redirect customers to Shopify’s Store App web site, a market for Shopify-hosted retailers marketed as a “digital procuring assistant” the place customers can search merchandise and types, make purchases and monitor shipments.
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The sale would put the deal among the many prime publicly reported all-cash area identify gross sales up to now in 2025, in accordance with figures tracked by area identify gross sales database NameBio.
In response to NameBio, the highest 5 most costly publicly reported all-cash domains bought final 12 months had been Rocket.com for US$14 million, Gold.com for US$8.5 million, Shift.com for US$1.3 million, TP.com for US$1.2 million and BestOdds.com for US$1.025 million.
The three most costly publicly reported all-cash area gross sales tracked by NameBio relationship again to 1999 are Voice.com for US$30 million, Chat.com for US$15.5 million, and NFTs.com for US$15 million.
Toronto-based Emerge owns a portfolio of area of interest e-commerce manufacturers, together with meat and seafood subscription enterprise truLocal, meat-of-the-month subscription service Carnivore Membership, low cost golf experiences and merchandise firm UnderPar, and golf merchandise and attire retailer JustGolfStuff.
The unique Store.ca emerged in 2011 as a made-in-Canada participant within the e-commerce market house, billing itself as “Canada’s largest on-line procuring vacation spot.” The corporate filed for chapter in 2016 after working up $72 million in losses. Emerge purchased Store.ca and revived it in 2018 as a vacation spot for content material and coupons, that includes procuring guides and coupon codes for main retailers.
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Emerge founder and chief government Ghassan Halazon mentioned in a press launch that the Store.us and Store.ca domains had been “idle and non-revenue producing lately” and had been bought to Shopify for “non-dilutive money proceeds to fund future development plans.”
The sale of Store.us and Store.ca rank pretty excessive amongst latest publicly reported area identify gross sales — however their dot-com counterpart bought for lots extra simply over 21 years in the past. In response to NameBio, Store.com bought for US$3.5 million in November 2003.
Area investing is usually a profitable enterprise. In response to IBIS World, the U.S. area identify gross sales business grew 4.4 per cent to US$9.4 billion in 2024. But it surely’s additionally a crowded market — aftermarket exchanges like Sedo and Afternic, which permit folks to purchase, promote and park domains, at the moment have hundreds of thousands of domains on the market.
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Nevertheless, it could repay for area traders who get it proper. In August 2020, New York-based trademark lawyer Jeremy Inexperienced Eche purchased HarrisWalz.com for US$8.99 — one in all a number of domains he’s bought primarily based on guessing doable future U.S. presidential tickets. He bought the area for US$15,000 in August 2024, which he instructed CBS MoneyWatch felt like “hitting the jackpot.”
• E mail: jswitzer@postmedia.com
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