Glow is an app that allows women to track their fertility cycles, they received another $17 million in funding bringing their total up to $23 million. Tech Crunch reported,
The company announced in August that it was responsible for getting over 20,000 women pregnant, using the app. It has also added quite a few other apps to the family over the last year with Glow First, Glow for Enterprise and Glow Nurture as well. These are all designed to take women beyond fertility tracking and into health and well-being during pregnancy. CEO Mike Huang says he plans to continue building out women’s health products with the new funding. “We’d like to double-down on the product, on our data and research, and on insurance,” says Huang.
The company uses the domain glowing.com while the app name is Glow, I think Glowing.com works well but one wonders with another $17 million in funding will they try to get the domain glow.com ?
The domain glow.com is owned by Derm Store LLC and has been registered since 1995. Glow.com redirects to Blush.com so it is possible that Glow is expendable.
Derm Store was acquired by Target in 2013.
- Based on reports from Internet Retailer, Target Corp has announced it will acquire Dermstore LLC, a skin care and cosmetics online merchant. Sales for DermStore LLC topped $56 million in 2012.
- DermStore markets over 26,000 products and 750 brands. Although details of the acquisition were not immediately available, DermStore LLC will become an independent subsidiary of Target under the name DermStore.com
What would you do if you were Glow ? Spend the money on the matching.com of your app name or leave things as they are and stay with glowing.com ?
Glowing.com fits this app so well. I can’t remember how many times I would hear someone tell my wife you are “Glowing” when she was pregnant. Apps don’t rely on traffic so they would just be burning money to buy Glow.com
@todd,
I know what you mean when you say “apps don’t rely on traffic”. Nevertheless, customers have to come from somewhere. Word of mouth, social media sharing, mentions within articles, spontaneous discovery in search engines, direct promotion through opt-in contact lists, or random collisions at the App Store — they’re all useful for customer acquisition. Apps or non-apps should and probably will use most of these marketing channels. Most are more efficient if backed up by domain ownership.
It’s always better to control an online home base that can be mentioned in conversations, be customized in design, and relay traffic wherever it’s most appropriate. Plus, it’s nice to brand those email conversations.
Right now, Glow may be just an app. But it’s a brand and a business, and it might choose to expand or pivot in the future.
So I don’t think Glow would “just be burning money” if it bought Glow.com.
The only reason I said they would be burning money is because they already have a great domain with Glowing.com. If they had Glowapp.com, or GetGlow.com or some other random domain then by all means buy Glow.com but fortunately they have a great domain so I still believe it would be burning money.
I am a firm believer that brands should always match their domain but in this one instance I don’t think it really matters. Glowing.com is an outstanding domain and works really well here.
@todd,
I didn’t realize they already owned Glowing.com. That was lazy of me not to check.
I included it in the article Joseph, I do agree with Todd that glowing.com works well, the question is how much would glow.com cost ? Currently it is only a redirect to Blush.com.
Let’s help the consumers by making their life easier. Use the same company name and service name. My suggestion is to get Glow.com to match the company name, or change the company name to Glowing to match Glowing.com.
When Target bought DermStore.com the companies that were included are DermStore.com, HairEnvy.com and Blush.com. It doesn’t say anywhere that any other domains were included in the purchase. Dan Obegi, the original owner of DermStore.com and is still the Whois for all the names was kept on as CEO of the company and possibly still forwards all of his domains to DermStore.com. It shows he has 477 domains associated with him and doubt these were included in the purchase.
It is possible that he forwarded the Glow.com name to Blush.com a long time ago but still owns the domain. Target may have nothing to do with this name at all. Maybe someone can send him an email to get a better grasp on this. I would be curious to know if the Glow people have been in contact and possibly made him an offer already.