In a Shopify Masters podcast,Andrew Lissimore detailed how getting Headphones.com gave his business credibility.
It’s a great episode in my opinion.
In this episode of Shopify Masters, you’ll learn how Andrew Lissimore got the domain for Headphones.com, how he scored a feature on CNET, and what him to pivot into headphones from speakers.
Here is a part of the transcript on the negotiation:
Andrew: And so I looked up the who is on the domain and there was a guy named Mike Faith. He’s the CEO of headsets.com. I think he bought both domains back when the internet first started in the early 90s, and ended up building a really big successful business on headsets.com, and just had headphones.com redirecting to headsets. So I sent him a message and I said… I forget what I said, but I said, “Hey, I’m interested in your domain. Are you looking to sell it by any chance?” Totally thinking there’s no way this would ever work. And this is a really good lesson, is just trying stuff where the risk is very low, but the potential upside’s really high. Another example is when I introduced myself to Steve from CNET. The risk was low, just embarrassment and the upside was huge.
Andrew: So yeah, sending this guy an email, he got back to me, and he said, “Great timing. We had a board meeting last week and we were talking about what we wanted to do with this domain.” So I thought, “Oh my goodness, this is awesome.” At the same time, in the back of my mind, I knew that I couldn’t afford the domain, whatever he wanted for it. There’s no way I had enough money. So I thought it was a bit of a pipe dream, but maybe we could work something out.
Andrew: Fast forward to four months. And we had spent the whole four months kind of going back and forth and negotiating and we made a deal for the domain. And it was very expensive, but I was able to get it tied to the business basically. So we were just paying for it monthly and then as the business grew, our payments would grow. And so yeah, that’s how we got the domain and we did it without… he wanted over a million dollars for it and we obviously did not have a million dollars to give. So I’d say he was a very reasonable negotiator, and a really, really nice guy, and ended up connecting you with other great people in the industry and stuff. So that all worked out really, really well.
Tip of the cap to Namepros member @onni
Very cool, thanks for sharing.