A little over a year ago, Aron Meystedt of Heritage Auctions sent me an email to announce a 6 figure post-auction sale. His company brokered Luxe.com for $172,500 after the company’s auction had concluded. Here’s what Aron told me in that March 2015 email:
www.Luxe.com is now an on demand parking and valet service… who received $20MM in funding recently.
They decided to shorten their domain from www.LuxeValet.com to just www.Luxe.comWe reached out to Luxe and described the benefits of moving forward on Luxe.com – and for them, it was a no brainer.
They bought it immediately. Following in the footsteps of Uber and others, customers can now intuitively find them at Luxe.com.
According to an article on TechCrunch, Luxe received a $50 million investment from Hertz.
The acquisition of the Luxe.com domain name seems like it continues to pay dividends for the startup. Of course, buying the domain name was not the reason for this large reported investment. Owning the brand .com domain name opens more opportunities for the company. The LuxeValet.com domain name would seem to limit them to one service. Even though their branding has been “Luxe,” the company’s LuxeValet.com url was on various marketing materials. Having the exact match brand .com domain name allows the company to grow or even pivot in different directions. Luxe has a positive meaning, and they are now simply Luxe.
Uber realized the need to acquire the Uber.com domain name early on in its lifetime, and I think they made a wise decision. It may have become an expensive domain acquisition, but it certainly has paid off as Uber has grown and expanded its offerings.
Kudos to Luxe for having the smarts to buy the 6 figure exact match domain name. I am sure it will continue to pay off for them as the business grows.
It looks like the price for the service is quite good, so I imagine the poor valet workers get paid peanuts. Hopefully with some major cities moving toward the $15/hr minimum that will prevent such a thing.
They got a bargain.