Walmart Stores, a division of Walmart (WMT) has just launched a new shopping site at Goodies.co.
And no Walmart doesn’t own the Matching .Com.
The store which launched in “Exclusive Beta” this week, has unique product offering. Sign up for $7 a month and you get samples of new food products, you participate in surveys which earns you points to buy full sized versions of the product you like.
Here is how Goodies.co described its offering:
1. Subscribe to Goodies Co.
Receive a Goodies Co. Taster’s box for just $7/month (no extra shipping or handling charges).
2. Receive your Taster’s Box
We bill subscribers on the 2nd of the month. Your box will ship 2-3 weeks later.
3. Taste everything in the box
Enjoy the handpicked selections from the Goodies Co. team.
4. Review & buy what you tasted
Come back to Goodies.co and review and buy the products you love and earn points.
Walmart is no stranger to online commerce and their use of a .Co, without also acquiring the matching .com (although obviously they have the funds to do so) is something that should give another big boost to the .Co registry.
They’re trying to make food… “social.” Not sure how successful this will be. If food samples are given out by companies, it’s always been free in the past. This is priced at a monthly rate that’s just 99 cents shy of a NetFlix membership. Color me very wary.
.CO, .COM… that’s not even a factor here.
Bleed, bleed, bleed. The owner of the .com just hit the lottery. They should put up a real site right away, full of “goodies”. Contact the Candy.com guys and rip the big W a new butt. 🙂
Whoever made the decision at Walmart to go with .co should be fired. The amount of traffic that will go to the .com will be huge. guaranteed. I am sure they could have purchased the .com for a fraction of the executive’s salary that made the fateful .co decision.
.co sure can sell the koolaid.
…I think the .com is not critical, no guarantee. Wal-Mart knows its stuff and they will succeed without having to pay the extortion that the .com owner thinks he /she will get. They WILL buy if the price is reasonable, but they are NOT stupid…
It’s interesting that the name appears to have been registered on general availability day, which means normal quality domains in .CO are starting to get traction as well. This is different from the past when the .CO acquisitions on large companies’ part were all grandfathering and landrush names.
@Ken – “without having to pay the extortion”
The .com was registered in 1995. The owner can sell the domain at whatever price and it’s not extortion. You just don’t understand domain investing.
…”You just don’t understand domain investing.”
…you may be right (and you may be wrong as well attacking me personally) but apparently Wal-Mart does understand, and doesn’t feel like getting gouged unnecessarily.
This can only bring about an interesting time for .com when even the bigger brick and clicks opt for domain names that do not include the obligatory .com. This is, after all, the 21st century, not the 20th…
ask overstock how well o.co turned out. over 50 million spent and 63% of their clicks leaked to the dotcom.
@Ken
To call it an “extortion” shows some bad judgement from your part. If a really large client asks to buy your land, would you price it the same as you would for the average individual? This is no different. The owner is now very lucky, and the value of the domain has gone UP.. I mean like VERY HIGH.
Rat
I don’t think your going to see walmart spending $50M on an ad campaign on this or rename football stadiums to goodies.co
Ken, what’s interesting is that Walmart will spend millions on a single store and advertising, but doesn’t seem to want the prime piece of Internet real estate that .COM represents? The vast majority of people (especially companies) will check if a .COM version of a name is available before going with another extension. There’s a reason for that.
Anyway, I wouldn’t waste money on an idea like this either, and going with the .CO extension shows that maybe Walmart isn’t all that confident in it, either.
Great move by Walmart. Launching goodies on .CO will appeal to the startup junkies, the early adopters. It removes the sense that this is a big corporation trying to be social.
Surprising to see soooo many of you thinking we’re still in the year 2000. That train moved on kids.
This was the whole idea behind the .co marketing strategy…………..if you can’t get the com
go with .co.
Why is there even a debate? It was a dumb move. Stuck in 2000? Put down the .co-ol-aid
61% traffic loss!!!!
proof = http://domainincite.com/7992-o-co-loses-61-of-its-traffic-to-o-com
…I highly doubt that this was done without thoroughly researching the cyberspace terrain and history of .co as it relates to their market and target.
Although I do understand Grim’s reply and myself question the soundness of the new project, especially with a relatively high monthly fee, if they (Walmart) could not see a profit coming out of the venture, I also doubt that they would even bother to embark on it. For a store that guarantees lowest prices, 7 bucks a month is 84 dollars a year, so the consumer better get their money’s worth and beyond. That in itself sounds like a radically big project…
…84 dollars a year, is that more than the yearly fee at Sam’s Club?…
Ken
You get stuff for your money not just a membership
.co is for Columbia.
Just because .co has a killer marketing team doesn’t mean it was a good decision. I bet the person that made the decision was just “smoozed” by .co . If the Walmart exec didn’t see the overstock report they are incompetent.
I don’t see this (not having the .com) as a huge issue. They are just dipping their toe in the water with this. by using links to drove their traffic via social means they are able to control most of the visits. If this program gets big, it might be a good time to get the .com. They can afford it and if the owner does not want to sell at their offered purchase price, What well-funded “goodies” competitor is going to want to go Toe to Toe with Walmart on a retail front? My suggestion is relax, let this settle for a little while and see what kind of traction it gets.
BTW – .co is for Colombia not Columbia 🙂
“Wal-Mart knows its stuff and they will succeed” – yes just like Lehman Brothers.
Coupled with o.co – this is clear evidence that most folks still do not get it – especially the ones spending innocent shareholder money – obviously they could not agree on the .com – but madison avenue will never win a battle against .com –
Michael, you get stuff for your money, but it’s stuff (food samples) that people have been used to getting for free. Worse, you have no say in what you’ll be getting when you sign up. This would be like paying $7 a month to get a CD each month that allows you to sample a variety of music (rap, country, jazz, new wave, etc), that you may or may not like.
I’ll be really surprised if it works. Walmart should have figured out a way to make it free, (it would be like a marketing expense for all the companies involved), while making money in other ways, and directing customers to their store, online or real, to buy the actual full products. But that wouldn’t really work either, as you’d have lots of people just looking for free food, signing up.
So basically, this idea doesn’t work either way. In any event, samples are nothing more than advertising. And like all advertising, potential customers aren’t used to the idea of being the ones who have to pay for it.
I’d say .co is for company or commerce. Here is why
1. Is .me for Montenegro (does an average American even know what Montenegro is)
2. Is .tv for Tuvalu or for TV (television in general)?
3. Is .co for Colombia or for company (commerce)?
We’ve been saying “tv”, “me”, “co” for years. These words are not subconsciously associated to countries and that’s what really matters
I’m sure .com will be replaced with something new someday
@Brian – my mistake. Thanks for the correction.
@Chip
“What well-funded “goodies” competitor is going to want to go Toe to Toe with Walmart on a retail front?”
They won’t have to go “toe to toe” if they have the .com. Goodies.com will get FREE traffic for the as long as Walmart promotes .co. Guaranteed.
Goodies.com won’t have to spend a dime for all of the traffic they will get.
Overstock: The coliseum, still o.co. The international sites, still o.co. Mobile, still o.co. hmmmm…
What Overstock did wrong was think that they could rebrand their entire company in the US to something different than “Overstock” from one day to the next. That was REALLY stupid. It could have been o.com and every single one of their existing customers would have been like “wtf is that?” Sure, they exacerbated the problem by doing so with a new extension.
Yeah, keep thinking that .co is for Columbia. Just like like .tv is for Tuvalu and .me is for Montenegro. It’s 2012 folks.
“I’m sure .com will be replaced with something new someday’ –
And this is why the new ccTLD registries will be making fortunes – off the clueless
But with this – I will use a Dennis Miller quote in a context related to those clueless speculating on the new TLDs – including .co
“Help the Helpless – but do not help the Clueless”
@Brian
Have you looked up goodies.co vs. goodies.com at Alexa.com? You’ll be surprise because there is no traffic leakage at all. All around the world (except for North America) ccTLD are becoming no.1 choice for SME
And I stand by what I’ve said. In some specific fields .com will be replaced with new extensions.
The question is how far ahead do you look, is it weeks, months or years? If you’re talking weeks and I’m talking years, then the is a time scale problem
With evidence to prove the point it is amazing that some just keep their head in the sand. It’s almost 2013 and .com is still king.
@anyone – How many .tv and .me and .whatever keys are on your phone??? none, but there is a .com key…….
put down the .co-olaid
…”almost 2013 and .com is still king.”
yep, but no longer the Henry the 7th type, more like Queen Elizabeth. Not the monolith it once was and with the new TLDs(Enom Central is pushing this to the hilt and I imagine that they aren’t alone) .com may be getting atrophy quicker than one may imagine.
Hey, I have more .com names in my portfolio than any other extension, but I know that this is 2012 and more than that, the youth are getting VERY used to a myriad assortment of extensions and they DO NOT have the sentimentality we do for the “king” of extensions.
gotta swim, sometimes…
Nothing like a positive .Co story to get the greedy .Com domainers upset. LOL
In their dillusional world everything extension except .Com is doomed to fail. The shift away from .Com exclusively is happening. Look around you. The landscape is changing and many .Com domainers are in serious denial.
By the way, just throwing insults at those who own something other than .Com domains doesn’t make your case.
To Warmachines, with respect, your arrogance will come back to bite you. I’ve seen stocks rise and fall. Peak and trough. Nothing remains #1 forever. Including this country! .Com’s hold continues to erode.
And the statement that someone should develop the .Com equivalent of goodies.co and kick Wal-Mart’s ***?! Good luck with that. Last time I checked, Wal-Mart was pretty good at crushing competition.
The arrogance of .Com domainers is astounding. Or is it just fear? Fear that their portfolio values are declining because they failed to diversify.
Guys
As we have been chatting about for years is you don’t have to be king to make money
We sold meet.me for $450K (too cheap at that) and .me isn’t king nor will ever be
So…
Queen’s, Princes, Barons don’t seem to be doing so badly either
Ken Schabelski-
“gotta swim, sometimes…”
Had to take that bait and use the Warren Buffett quote again:
“You only know who is swimming naked when the tide goes out”
So in your socialist world of TLD equality, when the tide goes out – everybody will have a towel not just the .com – so why speculate at all ??
And “sweetie” – only an owner of a decent .com portfolio knows how bad things are in europe and other parts of the world – and that is why they are throwing away their country and .eu TLDs and all their other BS domains and countacting the .com owner.
I do not make the rules – I play by them 🙂
@Paul “your arrogance will come back to bite you. ”
What part of the O.co report didn’t you understand? I just pay attention to facts which states O.co experienced a 61% bleed rate to the .com .
and yes Walmart will be giving the biggest gift of free traffic to the .com owner ever.
blah. blah, blah..
btw I have had more solid offers on my .com’s this year than ever from end users. While most are still low they are at least hitting $xxxx for decent 2 word combos.
What does everyone think about IDN.com names? More than half of internet users don’t speak English. I am noticing many more whois inquiries for my idn.com’s this year via godaddy info tools. No big offers but many more whois searches.
…”So in your socialist world of TLD equality”
I dunno where you popped up with that witticism, BrianWick, but maybe you don’t know that, not being a power player in the world of cyberspace, I have nothing to do with the landscape and creation of TLDs and that the younger demographic is NOT so attached to the .com as you may be or at least want them to be.
They’re just a product of what is happening now and what is coming in the future, so yeah, towel or no towel, ya still gotta swim…
Well said, Michael. No TLD will ever overtake .com, but there’s life (and plenty of money) beyond it, which so many domain investors seem to forget.
Also, one thing I’ve never understood is why the .CO is for Colombia mantra has never been applied to alternative ccTLDs like “.ME is for Montenegro” and “.TV is for Tuvalu”. Maybe because many .com portfolio owners fear .CO could harm their assets more than .ME and .TV so they feel the urge to repeat it ad nauseam?
@ Joe
I am not an American but I can remember times people used to say ” no black will ever be elected to be the president of the USA” Is that right? In Europe .com has already been thrown off the throne even though it used to be no.1 like 10-15 years ago.
My domain portfolio is mostly .com’s but I know things do change overtime
“Queen’s, Princes, Barons don’t seem to be doing so badly either”
“ya still gotta swim…”
You just need to make sure where you should be swimming – an ocean (new tld registries), a pool (a registrar) or a pond (clueless newbie speculators trying to hit a home run).
And that pond in going to be completely full of naked swimmers when that tide goes out – and those in the oceans (and somewhat the pools) will simply say “thanks” for living your lie with us.
All this stuff including .co and the other new non.com registries is all about end users wanting a domain rather than a facebook.com/nonsense page – not about speculation
But I understand – out of frustration – those words will fall on deaf ears
Congratulations !!!
to the owner of Goodies.com
(Erick?)
Let’s see how long it takes before they discover they made the wrong choice.
(remember o.com ?)
make that O.co
(the pavlovian response got me, honestly)
Hey, did Robert Cline pass away? Can’t see him here 😉
The risk of using .co-
New TechCrunch article about Goodies.co, typos the domain as Goodies.com-
“This data, combined with the sales data from customers buying the full-sized items from Goodies.com…”
http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/14/undercutting-startups-walmart-launches-food-subscription-service-goodies-co-for-7-per-month/
still uncorrected 5 hours after publication
R.I.P
Walmart shuts down snack delivery service Goodies dot co
I’m waiting for Berkens to break the news.
I think this as the post on the site says it was an experimental site by Walmart Labs, who knew there was a Walmart Labs.
It was a very experimental business model … and that’s why it came under their ‘labs” brand, where you paid a set amount per month and got a box of stuff you didn’t order but was picked out by Walmart.
They didn’t shut down because of their domain name…