Fabulous.com Partners With eNom, as Parent Company Photon Group “Clear Decks” [Updated]
Domain Registrar Fabulous.com announced this evening that they have partnered with domain name registrar eNom. Emails sent to their customer base (quoted in full below) this evening aren’t exactly clear in what capacity the two companies will be partnering. Fabulous says that the partnership allows them to “streamline and optimize our registrar technology, freeing us to focus on what has been key to our success:- great tools, great support” and that they “continue to remain a wholly-owned business of Dark Blue Sea“.
[Updated/added] A representative of eNom told DNN: “The Fabulous.com websites will remain in place and they will be leveraging eNom’s Registrar API technology to operate some of the backend Registrar operations. This shouldn’t effect the way customers do business with Fabulous except it will allow them to leverage some additional TLDs and products currently not offered.“
Fabulous’ announcement of Yexa, a registrar reseller software, in the summer of 2010 was an interesting move in to a space that eNom, a Demand Media company, dominates, the reseller business. Enom’s partnership with a potential competitor in that space, leaves one wondering about the specific arrangements. Recent news from Photon Group could also leave one wondering if there’s more to this arrangement as well.
Fabulous parent company Dark Blue Sea (DBS) was acquired by Photon Group in 2009. Photon was in debt at the time and since then their stock hasn’t faired well since. Last summer Photon brought in a new CEO, Jeremy Philip from News Corp who announced that he was going to “clear decks“. With mounting debt and a new CEO at the helm Photon sold four of their online properties. The company sold Findology.com in January 2011 and released a statement saying “Photon is examining its search marketing businesses” (of which DBS is it’s largest company) and “assessing the impact of the carrying value of the remainder of the search marketing businesses.” An announcement on the Photon site [PDF] states, “The Company continues to concentrate on its strategic review and operational improvements across the business.”
As of December 2010 Photon had reduced the number of companies owned from 45 to 28 and rumors about a potential sale of Dark Blue Sea have been circulating. DBS referred DNN requests for more information to Photon. DNN has not been able to reach Photon Group contacts..
See a full copy of the email that went out to Fabulous’ customers after the jump.
Hey <Customer Name>,
Thank you for your continued support of Fabulous.com.
We are pleased to announce a partnership with eNom.com, the world’s largest wholesale registrar.
The deal enables us to streamline and optimize our registrar technology, freeing us to focus on what has been key to our success:- great tools, great support and great customers.
We are excited about the opportunities this newest partnership provides for us and our customers, and we expect to be able to implement more features as a result – such as a broader selection of TLDs.
Rest assured, Fabulous.com remains a wholly-owned business of Dark Blue Sea and will continue to operate as per usual, providing you the same level of support.
Should you have any questions, please feel free to contact support (support@fabulous.com).
Kind regards,
Fabulous.com
support@fabulous.com
(c) 2011 DomainNameNews.com (7)
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