Overstock International to Rebrand as O.CO

OverstockI was speaking with a friend on the phone after my post about FB.CO, and it was mentioned that Overstock has indicated that the company will rebrand its International websites as O.CO. There is a small reference “soon to be O.co” below its logo.  At the present time, O.CO forwards to the Overstock website.

I think this could be very big for the .CO Registry, domain registrars selling .CO domain names, domain investors who have .CO domain names, and companies who have built websites on .CO domain names. The key to any TLD’s success is consumer awareness and that comes most rapidly when large brands actually use the extension rather than have it simply be a forwarder or other form of brand protection.

If Overstock actually “uses” O.CO and doesn’t just forward O.CO to something like Overstock.com/international, this will be very big news since Overstock is one of the more popular brands online.

I’ve mentioned this a number of times, but as a disclaimer my company owns a grand total of 6 .CO domain names (Bahamas.CO, cmm.CO, Elliot.CO, Torah.CO, Another.CO, and Beeb.CO), and .CO has been an advertiser.

Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

29 COMMENTS

  1. This does’nt make any sense to me unless they are trying to put themselves in an even stronger position to obtain O.com if/when it gets released, Overstock already hold a number of Live Trade Marks for O.COM

    There’s nothing wrong with the domain Overstock.com IMHO….strange world 🙂

  2. @ Gazzip

    I see it as a strong move so they don’t need Overstock.co.uk, Overstock.fr, Overstock.co.il, Overstock.es…etc. One solid brand.

    The downside is that it takes away each country’s international “flavor” and sort of lumps everyone outside of the US into one bucket.

    I suppose they can tackle the language issue by making the default language change based on geographic IP, so if someone from a Spanish IP comes to the site, the site will default to Spanish.

  3. They don’t need overstock.co.uk, .fr, .es etc – they own the .com

    .es is parked at sedo and it gets a grand total of 11 visitors in the previous 31 days…NO big loss of customers there !

    The BRAND is Overstock, not the .extension, it seems crazy to spend hundreds of thousands in rebranding on an extension only for people to go to O.com that does’nt even exist. (ATM)

    I must admit I had’nt ever heard of Overstock before until recently when they bought the .co LOL

    “I suppose they can tackle the language issue by making the default language change based on geographic IP, so if someone from a Spanish IP comes to the site, the site will default to Spanish.”

    Agreed, the Simple but Perfect solution.:)

  4. More shenanigans. It would be about the dumbest move ever. Nobody even knows that .co even exists. If they actually had to go to O.co to find their site it would ruin their business since most people would assume it meant O.com.

    The whole thing with Overstock is quite suspicious. I find it hard to fathom that the original deal that Overstock did with the .co registry is on the up and up. It seems it was part of a marketing plan for the .co registry. They needed to find someone to help them publicize their extention.

    It doesn’t pass the smell test. The CEO at Overstock has been known to engage in quite interesting conduct, and this is right up his alley.

    Anyone who would risk their company by re-branding it to the worthless, unproven, and confusing extention that is .co is someone that shouldn’t be taken seriously.

    There is more to the story, as usual. Of course, what they will tell you is that everything is legit and you cannot prove that Overstock isn’t in bed with the registry. Whatever.

    There is essentially zero chance that the CEO of Overstock woke up one day and contacted the .co registry and offered to pay over 300K for O.co. Overtock is simply part of the registries plan to try to convince other people and companies that the extention has some value. The extention adds zero value to any business. How can it?

    Imagine how ridiculous it would sound if you heard a rumor that Ebay.com was rebranding to E.co? It is pitiful, pathetic, and stupid to believe it, and for it to be true the business has to be getting paid off from the reigstry. Nobody could possibly be that stupid.

    • “It doesn’t pass the smell test.”

      @ Pete

      LOL.

      Overstock’s television commercials and other advertising refers to themselves as “the big O.” Are you saying that Overstock, the company that earned nearly $1 billion in revenues in 2009 (http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y10/m04/i01/s03) is doing all of this to save a measly $350,000 and this is part of some side deal the .CO Registry struck with them? Not likely and illogical, IMO.

      Perhaps you should check out O.biz, since Overstock already rebranded their business section as O.biz a while back. It appears that Overstock is now doing this with their International site in a similar fashion.

      What you are saying doesn’t really make much sense, although many conspiracy theories don’t make much sense when you think about them logically.

  5. Rebranding and marketing under .co makes no sense to me when Overstock have the .com and have obviously achieved great success and presence with it.

    To the contrary, most foreign countries are familiar with .com and have no clue what a .co is. However, I see the “Soon to be O.co” on the international site so they must be looking at a definite utilization of it.

  6. This is a good news for domainers who invested in the .co names and btw thanks to o.co for the the marketing contribution and added value! 🙂
    I think overstock is a huge company and they can afford playing with their brand as they like and i think they are doing a good job + .co is sexy.

  7. Elliot:
    They’re postioning themselves to lay claim to O.com. Nothing more, nothing less. The #1 reason our dotComs get offers by foreign companies with their own ccTLD is because they see dotCom as the only global TLD and they want to expand their market. For Overstock to say they are using doCo for global branding is tongue in cheek at best. Watch how fast they replace it with O.com if they ever acquire it. But until that happens this is great PR for dotCo.

  8. That’ an expensive game to get the .co just to get one step closer to the .com. going global seems actually like going with the .co over .com. trends show that people prefer shorter URLs, they look better and easy to remember.
    I can imaging Overstock still acquiring O.com and redirecting it to .co.

  9. My personal belief is that ICANN or whoever deals with the cc’s seriously screwed up when handing out ccTLDs – was ‘co’ deliberately intented to cause confusion and basically be a charter for trademark abusers? Was there no other letter they could possibly have given to the Colombians?

    I just noticed another grubby little practice that the daddy of registrars is currently having a go at so be careful – if you search a domain from their front page to hand reg, the .CO is now shown at the top default “Yes available!” and if you dont untick that and tick the .com before hitting add youll end up with a pile of junk in your shopping cart lmao you gotta hand it ol’ Bob he sure knows how to turn a buck.

  10. @ David “Watch how fast they replace it with O.com if they ever acquire it.”

    The operative word is “IF”. We can only go by current facts which is O.co. I’m sure they will acquire o.com if it is available.

  11. I understand what David is saying, it’s basically a trademark thing imo. Acquiring o.biz and then o.co and getting trademarks for those. If o.com became available Overstock would file claim to have trademarks over it. Not to say they would get it for sure like that, but it would be more difficult for anyone else to acquire, and they would certainly have legal battles. If they did acquire o.com in the future, owning o.co would be good protection against someone else typosquatting the .com The 350,000 is chump change anyways.

  12. Overstock seem to be not only testing the waters with tld’s, but also with their lines of business under the Overstock umbrella. Here’s a link to a page that lists about 6 different businesses including auctions & real estate (you must click the link “Our Business” to see the list). I had no idea Overstock had any involvement in these areas.

  13. “If o.com became available Overstock would file claim to have trademarks over it. ”

    No “ifs” about it

    They (Overstock) ALREADY have ELEVEN live trade marks for O.com (including the .com extension)

    + 1 TM for O.co

    They’ve been filing them for the .com since 2003, how’s that for forward thinking 🙂

  14. I have Two nagging questions, maybe someone knows?

    1) How come someone can get a TM which includes the extension?
    (not that it is a bad thing if you own the .com)

    2) How can someone get granted a TM for a domain name (including extension) that they don’t own ?

    ….anyone?

  15. Elliot,

    Why did you get cmm.co? Is it significant in anyway?

    Just curious because I got an LLL.co as well but I didn’t put any thought nehind it. I just got it because it as LLL and was available (made sure there were no TMs too)

  16. The best moves OVERSTOCK can make to ensure they surpass Amazon in sales and popularity.

    A commercial within which O looks like a recycle logo but it represents how OVERSTOCK’s shipment structure works. or return policy, etc.

    i know it sounds like a bad idea to promote return policy to humanity but trust me, you have no idea how important it is to give up on 1 penny in exchange for 1000 pennies.

    They can make a commercial showing how humans are born, they shop at O.CO and then they die but their children grow up and go shop on O.CO thus existence is all about O.CO

    if O.CO however ends up suing people like amazon is stealing domains from people for ‘amazon’ then i think this planet belongs to somebody else.

    i really want to see Overstock do well, but they need to just protect O.CO rather than filing lawsuits against others.

    the world functions based on honesty/trustworthy, lawsuits will do nothing but make your competitors lucky.

    the whole reason why overstock is having an awesome time is because amazon started terminating peoples account based on who is returning to many items.

    they don’t mention it in their policy but this is how things begun functioning within the inner realms of amazon and it is a bad business practice.

    they even no longer show you what you ordered on their web site so that you do not think about returning an item.

    usually the account gets terminated for some other reason when the prime reason is never discussed when they terminate your account.

    O.CO should also get 4 other companies so the kingping O.CO can be supported by 4 legs.

    4 legs should be, they should make a directory that links to sites on the internet based on associates not google style, selective directory maintained by o.co

    if you add 3 more companies to O.CO you can have a check mate.

    – Sumer Kolcak

  17. If you search a domain from their front page to hand reg, the .CO is now shown at the top default “Yes available!” and if you dont untick that and tick the .com before hitting add youll end up with a pile of junk in your shopping cart lmao you gotta hand it ol’ Bob he sure knows how to turn a buck.

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