Operating on a domain name that isn’t your exact-brand match, raw .com domain name can cause multiple issues. One of the most notable potential problems can be brand identity.
Regardless of how many marketing dollars are spent on reinforcing a brand name, the wrong domain name can scupper even the best laid plans.
A prominent example of this is Carrot, a real estate company that bought Carrot.com after realizing that operating on OnCarrot.com meant that customers referred to the business as OnCarrot, rather than Carrot. In a DomainNameWire interview, founder Trevor Mauch told the story of one set of customer encounters at a conference, saying,
“50% of the people that were [at the conference] came up to us and said, ‘We love Oncarrot. We absolutely love OnCarrot.’”
Another company is experiencing a similar issue. This one is perhaps worse, with one of the brand’s investors failing to get the company name right.
Fussy is a sustainable body care brand from the UK, helping consumers to move away from single-use plastic products that may be in your bathroom. The company, founded in 2020, has raised £1.7 million (around $2 million) in funding to date, including a £1.1 million ($1.25 million) crowdfunding round closed in October 2022.
The company had previously appeared on Dragons’ Den, the UK’s version of Shark Tank, in which entrepreneurs enter a studio and pitch their company to a panel of investors with the aim of raising some funds.
Fussy received £50,000 ($57,000) in funding through two investors on Dragons’ Den, Peter Jones and Deborah Meaden.
Following the funding round, Meaden published details about Fussy on her website. Unfortunately for Fussy, the investor referred to the company as Getfussy in the article’s title. As you might have guessed, Fussy operates on GetFussy.com, a domain registered in 2020, likely for the creation of this brand.
Meanwhile, Fussy.com is for sale at BrandBucket for $56,275. Coincidentally, that’s roughly the amount of money Meaden and Jones invested in Fussy. Time for an upgrade?
