About six weeks ago, my room­mate got some take­out from a bar and noticed that the web­site adver­tised on their menu wasn’t actu­ally owned by them or any­one for that mat­ter. I used a coupon code on GoDaddy to buy the adver­tised domain for $0.99, spent an hour or so edit­ing a free web­site tem­plate, and now it seems as if this bar is try­ing to rebrand them­selves entirely by a new name.

Before I go on, this is entirely spec­u­la­tive on my part. Their slow, poorly orga­nized rebrand­ing may be (and prob­a­bly is) totally unre­lated to my nerdy prank but what if, right?

The Brand

Redmond’s is just another Wrigleyville bar and part of the Bar1Events group. They have an eas­ily acces­si­ble loca­tion, con­stant cheap pro­mo­tions, and a kitchen that serves bad bar food. I live close by and notice they aren’t hurt­ing for busi­ness on most nights. Their online pres­ence is scat­tered and unfo­cused which makes me think they know it’s impor­tant, but they just can’t deliver. Besides a non-existant web­site, they have a Twit­ter account, MySpace page, Face­book page, a good num­ber of check-ins on Foursquare, and a num­ber of good reviews on Yelp. They don’t do a good job of inte­grat­ing all of these accounts to build a story and experience.

You’ll see at the bot­tom of their menu they include their web­site (here’s a PDF of their menu). One would expect to visit that URL and find their hours, a menu, maybe some upcom­ing events, or pos­si­bly an online order­ing sys­tem. You def­i­nitely wouldn’t expect for the site to not exist at all or for an online merkin store to come up instead.

The Hijack

When my room­mate noticed their web­site didn’t exist, I imme­di­ately jumped on the oppor­tu­nity to buy this already adver­tised domain and setup a fake merkin store for fun. It cost me $1 and an hour of my time. Wel­come to Redmond’s Chicago!

Why merkins? They’re funny and it’s kind of been a run­ning joke amongst my friends for a few years. I didn’t have any mali­cious intent. I wasn’t try­ing to squat on a domain they might buy. I just thought it was funny.

We spent another hour or two mak­ing sure every men­tion of “Redmond’s Chicago” on the inter­net had their pro­file URL pointed to http://redmondschicago.com. You’d be amazed how easy it is to update your Google Maps list­ing, Yelp list­ing, and a half dozen smaller nightlife sites. Ana­lyt­ics proved no one actu­ally vis­ited their site despite our efforts (a lit­tle over 300 vis­its in 6 weeks).

A quick look at NameChk for ‘red­mond­schicago’ reveals there’s def­i­nitely room for them to expand their online brand. I could have reg­is­tered 50 other accounts for my fake merkin store, but I lost inter­est by that point.

The Rebrand

We moved on and didn’t pay much atten­tion to the site or Redmond’s until we noticed they changed the Google Maps URL to http://redmondsalehouse.com. That URL redi­rects to Bar1Events. Soon other instances of the new URL started to pop up. Then, we mis­tak­enly returned to Redmond’s this week and the new cheap paper menus read “Redmond’s Ale House” and the wait­ress was adamant to the point it became con­fronta­tional that they were always an ale house. It’s pretty clear from read­ing Bar1Events and even their menu that doesn’t men­tion “Ale House” any­where that the change is recent.

What I can’t explain (which is why this is all spec­u­la­tive) is why they are just now mak­ing this switch when the domain has been reg­is­tered since 2006 by Bar1Events? Also, why is Bar1Events based out of Penn­syl­va­nia when the bars they rep­re­sent are all in Chicago?

The Fix

Maybe they really are going in a new direc­tion and I’ve wasted yet another blog post on some­thing unimportant.

Some­one obvi­ously for­got to renew their domain which may have forced the rebrand. Instead of spend­ing the time and effort to change their name and image every­where, why wouldn’t they try to fix their mis­take? It’s three easy steps:

  1. Do a WHOIS on their old domain
  2. Email the new reg­is­trant (me) and ask what it would take to get the domain back
  3. Have the new reg­is­trant (me) trans­fer the domain back to their possession

In a day or two every­thing would be back to nor­mal. EASY. But what if the reg­is­trant doesn’t give the domain back?

They could buy another domain like they did but instead of try­ing to brand them­selves as an “ale house” which they obvi­ously are not. Why not go for some­thing sim­pler like ‘redmondsbar.com’? Yes, as I’m writ­ing this that domain is avail­able. No, I am not going to buy it to prove a point.

If they’re just going to spend $10/yr on a domain that auto­mat­i­cally redi­rects to that hor­rid Bar1Event, why not use a cus­tom URL short­ener that would allow them to track sta­tis­tics? Put  http://bit.ly/redmonds in all of your pro­files and list­ings for free with the same result. That one’s free.

I have other ideas if you’re inter­ested and lis­ten­ing Redmond’s (Bar1Events). You don’t have any point of con­tact listed on any of your sites except for the bar phone num­ber. Get at me and I’d be glad to give you your silly domain back.