4 ms·

Generic words are not brands. I have no feelings about shoes.com nor can I ever other than I like shoes. I care about certain brand of shoes because they look n

by devoply 10y ago

Generic words are not brands. I have no feelings about shoes.com nor can I ever other than I like shoes. I care about certain brand of shoes because they look nice and last a while, i.e. quality. That's why companies fight to keep their brands from becoming generic names.

gumby 10y ago
Indeed, it's a shame that that company Microsoft (remember them? They made a BASIC interpreter for CP/M) chose useless names like Windows and Word. The string, be it Google (nonsense word, to most people), Windows (generic word), or Apple (real word out of context) is all about what you do with it.
emodendroket 10y ago
Surely this is less common now, but I can remember at one point it was a pretty common behavior to say, "hm, I want some information at shoes" and just try navigating to shoes.com. Probably this became less common because porn advertisers caught on and started redirecting to porn.
- adventured 10y ago
  Certainly it was expected that that style of navigation would be extremely lucrative. It never turned out that way of course. In large aggregate domain squatters have made some real money over the last 20 years by owning various direct type domains (like weddingshoes.com). I remember in the mid & late 1990s, during the insane dotcom landgrab, people really believed having that special domain name was everything. At the time, it coincided with people thinking they could build a business overnight and IPO the next week, so having something like Shoes.com to sell to naive investors was crucial. I remember one guy pitching the premise, on CNBC and elsewhere, that he had acquired all the buything.com domains, like buysocks.com, and he was going to build a retailing juggernaut on the back of that.
  - emodendroket 10y ago
    Easy-to-remember domain names are still good. People make a lot of money parking domains and you would expect that to be impossible if they were worthless.
icantdrive55 10y ago
I'll give one business idea away because my sister stole all my mother's money. She did it in a passive aggressive legal way. Yea--she's not a good person. If she was a man, she would be called out on her complete lack of any morality, but she squeaks by on the, "I'm just a crafty female trying to make it in a man's world?". She is a piece of work, but a business mastermind. When she first started in her garage, she told me, "The average woman will spend thousands on fashion--even if they become fashion victims." I thought she was being overly simplistic, but I was wrong. My sister is a multi-millionaire. She is also very lonely because of the way she got a lot of her money. She's always trying to find peace. Buddhism one year--yoga the next--everything except what she was brought up in--Christianity. Now it's a new younger Latin husband who's very close to his family. She's in complete denial, but rich. The idea; Make women's shoes. Buy the old shoe making equipement, and make shoes. Hire a woman as a Designer. (A woman other women try to copy. In most social groups there is one. Men usually can't pick her out. We look for different qualities. The Designer needs to know fashion.) Women love shoes. Yes--men love shoes too, but right now it's mainly Nikes, or tennis shoes. Women will spend $400 on a pair of shoes without batting an eye. They buy shoes monthly. (I'm throwing this business idea out there because we need to start throwing out good ideas. Please reciprocate?)

by devoply 10y ago

gumby 10y ago

Indeed, it's a shame that that company Microsoft (remember them? They made a BASIC interpreter for CP/M) chose useless names like Windows and Word. The string, be it Google (nonsense word, to most people), Windows (generic word), or Apple (real word out of context) is all about what you do with it.

emodendroket 10y ago

Surely this is less common now, but I can remember at one point it was a pretty common behavior to say, "hm, I want some information at shoes" and just try navigating to shoes.com. Probably this became less common because porn advertisers caught on and started redirecting to porn.

adventured 10y ago
Certainly it was expected that that style of navigation would be extremely lucrative. It never turned out that way of course. In large aggregate domain squatters have made some real money over the last 20 years by owning various direct type domains (like weddingshoes.com). I remember in the mid & late 1990s, during the insane dotcom landgrab, people really believed having that special domain name was everything. At the time, it coincided with people thinking they could build a business overnight and IPO the next week, so having something like Shoes.com to sell to naive investors was crucial. I remember one guy pitching the premise, on CNBC and elsewhere, that he had acquired all the buything.com domains, like buysocks.com, and he was going to build a retailing juggernaut on the back of that.
- emodendroket 10y ago
  Easy-to-remember domain names are still good. People make a lot of money parking domains and you would expect that to be impossible if they were worthless.

icantdrive55 10y ago

I'll give one business idea away because my sister stole all my mother's money. She did it in a passive aggressive legal way. Yea--she's not a good person. If she was a man, she would be called out on her complete lack of any morality, but she squeaks by on the, "I'm just a crafty female trying to make it in a man's world?". She is a piece of work, but a business mastermind. When she first started in her garage, she told me, "The average woman will spend thousands on fashion--even if they become fashion victims." I thought she was being overly simplistic, but I was wrong. My sister is a multi-millionaire. She is also very lonely because of the way she got a lot of her money. She's always trying to find peace. Buddhism one year--yoga the next--everything except what she was brought up in--Christianity. Now it's a new younger Latin husband who's very close to his family. She's in complete denial, but rich. The idea; Make women's shoes. Buy the old shoe making equipement, and make shoes. Hire a woman as a Designer. (A woman other women try to copy. In most social groups there is one. Men usually can't pick her out. We look for different qualities. The Designer needs to know fashion.) Women love shoes. Yes--men love shoes too, but right now it's mainly Nikes, or tennis shoes. Women will spend $400 on a pair of shoes without batting an eye. They buy shoes monthly. (I'm throwing this business idea out there because we need to start throwing out good ideas. Please reciprocate?)