In 2020, British supplements brand Bulk Powders acquired the domain name Bulk.com in anticipation of a complete overhaul of the company’s identity.
The brand’s switch from BulkPowders.co.uk to Bulk.com happened in late 2020, as I documented.
Founded in 2006, Bulk Powders was a brand created by two university students who borrowed £6,000 (around $8,300) to launch the sports nutrition company, operating on BulkPowders.co.uk.
With revenues in excess of £35 million ($48 million) by 2017, the brand was booming. By 2020, Bulk Powders began the process of rebranding in order to progress further. That rebranding led to the company’s acquisition of Bulk.com for an undisclosed fee.
The rebranding process meant a complete redesign of the company’s product packaging and it also meant a complete migration of Bulk’s domain name portfolio.
Bulk’s migration has been documented by ThePixel, an e-commerce solutions company.
According to ThePixel, before the rebrand, Bulk was operating multiple online stores for multiple countries using the local ccTLD in each case. For example, Bulk’s Spanish store was BulkPowders.es, Bulk’s French store was BulkPowders.fr, and Bulk’s Italian store was BulkPowders.it.
The transition to Bulk.com meant that all the company’s ccTLDs were essentially made redundant, with all country stores located under the Bulk.com domain. Bulk’s Spanish store, for example, became Bulk.com/es.
It’s interesting to see that Bulk chose to centralize its domain name operation, using the power of a one-word .COM to host all of its country stores.
Bulk’s rebrand from Bulk Powders has also meant that, unsurprisingly, Bulk is branching out from just selling nutritional products. Recently, for example, Bulk announced a “Human Optimization” product; a DNA test kit to complement the fitness industry.