In December 2021, Grove Collaborative announced their intention to go public via a SPAC. While Grove operates from the Grove.co domain name, they also own the elite one-word dot-com Grove.com (which simply redirects to their .co). Are we able to determine the acquisition cost of that domain name?
As an aside, this domain name movement had been noticed in 2020 by Jamie Zoch, as noted on Twitter:
Eco-friendly product brand Grove has acquired the all important .com domain name from its past owners for its brand. https://t.co/l8eLaRhbEf is now redirecting to the companies .co domain name and I'd expect them to switch fully to the .com in the near future. #grove #brand
— Jamie Zoch (@DotWeekly) May 16, 2020
A recent SEC filing disclosed (on page F-26) the “purchase of intangible assets” in the amount of USD $873,000 in 2019. This was atypical, as there were no similar purchases in 2020 or 2021.
Using the WHOIS history at DomainTools.com, we can confirm that the grove.com domain name used to be owned by “The Grove Consultants” in 2019. But, the domain name then went into WHOIS privacy. Using Archive.org, we can see that the Grove Consultants changed their domain name to “TheGrove.com” in late 2019. By the start of 2020, the domain name’s redirection changed, so that it redirected to Grove Collaborative’s grove.co website instead.
Thus, I believe it’s safe to conclude that Grove Collaborative acquired the Grove.com domain name for USD $873,000 in 2019, albeit with a transition agreement so that the prior owners could redirect the domain name for a period of time. By 2020, the transition agreement had concluded.