Best use of brand name domain

[ttfan]

I'm involved in a relatively small online shop which sells a range of different (non-exclusive) brand products. It's quite a niche industry with less than a handful of retailers that sell similar stuff (some of the same brands).

We own the .com.au domains of a few of the brands that we carry, which I simply re-direct to the shop website, so if anyone types it in, they end up on at the shop that sell this brand.

Is this the best use of these domains, or are there better ways to monetise them?

Thanks a lot!

 

[eBranding.com.au]

Does the online shop own the brands (IP, trademarks)?

If not, then it strikes me as a precarious position - given the brands could file a dispute on those domains.

 

[helloworld]

Depends on your relationship with the brand. I can attest to my clients use of brand domains to point to their product page. We also run Adwords campaigns to land on these paged while displaying the branded parked domain.


Tl;dr

Ask the brand

 

[eBranding.com.au]

Depends on your relationship with the brand. I can attest to my clients use of brand domains to point to their product page. We also run Adwords campaigns to land on these paged while displaying the branded parked domain.


Tl;dr

Ask the brand

Totally agree.

 

[ttfan]

Thanks for the responses. Please let me clarify:

These brands don't have a direct presence or trademark in Australia. There is no IP associated with this. It is sports equipment (professional not recreational) hat we're selling.

All that the manufacture has is a distributor for their products in Australia. For some brands we are the distributor, for some of the others we sell products of that brand, but we are not the official distributor, as we buy off another official distributor (either in or outside Australia).

Since the shop has a more generic domain name, what is the best use of the brand domain names that we own?

 

[eBranding.com.au]

Where I've got related domains I typically forward them to the 'main site' or relevant page of that site.

Developing one-pagers or minisites on those related domains with links to the main site is another approach that some take. Personally, it isn't a strategy that I've found to be effective, it seems to just waste resources (namely time). In some cases, if done badly it could actually end up hurting your Google ranking (lots of poor quality links).

 

[ttfan]

Thank you, that's pretty much what I've done!

 

[ttfan]

Does the online shop own the brands (IP, trademarks)?

If not, then it strikes me as a precarious position - given the brands could file a dispute on those domains.

Given the further information I've supplied, do you still feel I'm in a "precarious" position?

 

[eBranding.com.au]

Given the further information I've supplied, do you still feel I'm in a "precarious" position?

There are others on here that are far more qualified to answer that than me, for example Erhan (Cooper Mills). It's also very hard to judge without knowing the specifics (I appreciate that sharing details of the domains may not be appropriate on a public forum).

My approach has been to not register domains that represent a trademark or well known brand of another company. It's not worth the dramas.

 

[findtim]

you are just flying under the radar for now, once they find out you could have put a lot of time into it and end up with nothing even if they don't have an aussie trademark.

so in essence talking about strategy of domain name use is pointless, doing a redirect is probably best as spending time on a landing page which then gets taken off you is a waste

I'd also make sure the redirect goes to a page that sells THEIR product, this may help you.

I'm currently developing a domain name that is exactly like this but we went and got the brands permission before we started.

I think better to contact them now and state something like " hi, I have this domain because I am selling your products via that domain and I am buying from your authorised supplier" this will bring the wolves out from the wood and you will know where you stand TODAY instead of down the track

but I'm not a lawyer

tim

 

[Cooper Mills DomainLawyer]

We recommend that you steer clear of anything that may even look close to infringing trademarks.

From a purely auDRP perspective the landmark cases in this area are the HoldenDiscounts Case and the BMWDiscounts Case (which we won for our client - these cases accepted the OkiData Principles in Australia)

I would read those cases

 

[ttfan]

Thank you!