Aaron Marino – Enemy Eyewear founder – Source: Instagram @enemyshades
Aaron Marino is a very popular men’s lifestyle blogger.
The scruffy, self-styled “alpha male” entrepreneur operates alpham, a YouTube channel with 5.2 million subscribers.
Aaron Marino’s angle to what constitutes great men’s style has earned him great reputation among men wanting to improve their image, and lifestyle.
Mr. Marino isn’t afraid of failure, and the highly competitive Shark Tank showed him that it’s ok to fail – but it’s great to get back up and move onto the next adventure in life. At the time the episode aired in 2016, Aaron Marino’s YouTube channel had “only” 400k subscribers.
So what is Aaron Marino’s latest venture and why is it going to be an absolute success?
Let’s rewind the clock a bit.
Enemy Eyewear – Source: Instagram @enemyshades
In October 2018, Enemy Eyewear was conceived, with the registration of at least two domain names, EnemyEyewear.com and EnemyShades.com. On January 10, 2019, Enemy LLC was formed in Georgia.
Enemy Eyewear is a partnership between friends Aaron Marino and Jon Yeazel who developed a plan to create a line of men’s eyewear that made a difference, both with their affordable pricing, and their style.
Simply put, Enemy wasn’t going to be just a pretty logo on a pair of generic, white label glasses.
In February 2019, the ultra premium domain name, Enemy.com changed hands.
The acquisition was followed by a notice inviting visitors to sign up for a Spring launch. In April, Aaron Marino announced the story of Enemy shades, and the launch of Enemy.com in this video:
For several years, the domain Enemy.com was in the possession of a UK-based domain investor, operating as Inavit, Inc. The domain Enemy.com was listed for sale in 2013, as this Flippa listing shows. The seller’s account is linked to a “Karim Alighanbari” who appears to be an Iranian living in the UK.
At the time, Enemy.com was a repository of online games, and had a matching Facebook page. That page, now taken over by Aaron Marino’s Enemy.com still retains some of the old photos shared by the games version of the page. Its classification is still “Games/Toys” and it has a followship of 2,780 people.
Enemy.com Facebook page
We reached out to Enemy Eyewear, seeking information related to the sale of the domain name, Enemy.com.
They responded quickly, stating that the price that Enemy.com was acquired at will not be disclosed. Additionally, Enemy Eyewear shared with us that the partnership between Aaron Marino and Jon Yeazel is not backed by an investment team currently.
So how much was Enemy.com acquired for?
As domain investors, we want to say “millions of dollars,” as the recent publicized sale of Voice.com dictates. After all, generic domain names that are short and brandable, can command high amounts of money when sold. Additionally, Enemy.com is a domain registered in 1995 and a noun; the keyword’s negative connotation is being used creatively, to reference an aggressive, masculine brand of eyewear.
We’d estimate the sale of Enemy.com to be between $200,000 and $300,000 dollars.
Originally, Enemy.com was most likely registered by Mike Knuth, formerly of Enemy Records, a Brooklyn company, way back in 1995. It is not clear how it was acquired by Inavit in 2011. Around the same time, it was listed for sale on Afternic.
As a brand of quality eyewear, Enemy.com is worth considerably more than the dollar value the domain was acquired for. Congratulations to Aaron Marino for this new, exciting venture via Enemy.com!
Update: The domain Enemy.com was acquired for $43,000 dollars; the seller’s asking price was $50,000 dollars initially. Source.
