Power Sellers Unite

elgato · Joined: 24 Feb 2005 Posts: 17240 Location: Texas

You've got to hand it to Overstock.com (Nasdaq: OSTK ) . Rather than quietly letting Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN ) steamroll it in online retailing, the plucky discount underdog has hatched a gutsy plan to win back the hearts (and wallets) of shoppers.

Say hello to O.co, the brand new Overstock. The company's spending just over $7 million for naming rights to the Oakland Coliseum -- for the next six years, O-town will be O.co-town. It's far from the first boneheaded rebranding in corporate history, but will it ultimately join the list of silly
second names that succeeded in spite of themselves.

http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2011/10/13/the-no-good-very-bad-rebranding.aspx

Jerryb · Joined: 15 Mar 2009 Posts: 444

I think it was a very good move on Overstock to grab this domain name- the advertising and controversy alone was well worth the huge price. A lot better than those lame TV ads. lol (now to try and get that jingle out my mind!) the ads are gone after a week or so but the controversy still goes on .. a never ending freebee

I have a couple .co domain names and i think overstock has added a lot of validity and value to all the other .co extensions. a lot of big name brands that did not get them when they were offered in the grace period are now regretting it imo along with the extensions .me

elgato · Joined: 24 Feb 2005 Posts: 17240 Location: Texas

Related:

"O, No! Overstock Backs Off O.com Name Change"

Overstock.com officially rebranded itself as O.co about six months ago. It changed the sign on the NFL stadium to which it owns the naming rights, revamped its website with O.co signage, and began an aggressive run of TV commercials that declared, "Overstock.com is now O.co."

Except that now it's not.

The company is returning to Overstock.com on the website, in online ads, and in new TV ads for holiday.

The online retailer's president, Jonathon Johnson, said it is stepping back from the O.co name "for now," though not abandoning it outright. Overstock will still use the O.co name internationally and on mobile efforts, including an iPad app that launches today. And the sign on the "O.co Coliseum," the home of the Oakland Raiders and the Oakland Athletics, will stay up.

Confused? So were customers. Mr. Johnson said customers responded well to the O.co advertising, but after watching the spots, "a good portion" of those who sought out the website went to O.com, instead of O.co. (O.com is one of the off-the-market single letter domain names still held by ICANN.)

"We were going too fast and people were confused, which told us we didn't do a good job," Mr. Johnson said. "We're still focused on getting to O.co, just at a slower pace. ... We're not flipping back, we're just refocusing."

http://adage.com/article/news/o-overstock-backs-o-change/230983/

elgato · Joined: 24 Feb 2005 Posts: 17240 Location: Texas

"Overstock.com takes a financial hit from Google search penalty and O.co rebranding"

A search penalty from Google Inc. and a rebranding effort centered around the letter “O” helped to depress revenue by 3% for Overstock.com Inc. in 2011, the mass merchandiser reported today. Overstock is No. 27 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide.

For the year ending Dec. 31, 2011, Overstock reported that:

• Sales decreased 3.3%, to $1.054 billion from $1.090 billion in 2010.

• Gross profit decreased 5.5%, to $179.1 million from $189.6 million last year.

• Sales and marketing expenses increased 0.8% to $61.8 million from $61.3 million.

• General, administrative and technology expenses increased 18.3% to $134.8 million from $113.9 million.

Just more than year ago, Google Inc. punished Overstock for offering discounts for links back to the e-commerce site, a violation of Google policy that frowns upon paying for links. The penalty lasted until April 21, and Overstock had previously reported that the punishment resulted in a 5% revenue drop during the period the penalty was in force. “We were able to offset some of negative impact to revenue by increasing expenditures in other marketing channels,” Overstock said today in its financial report.

http://www.internetretailer.com/2012/03/02/overstockcom-takes-financial-hit-search-penalty-and-oco