Religious products cataloger The Catholic Co., which has sold online since 2001, has purchased Rosary.com for an undisclosed amount.
The new Rosary.com, according to a release, launched Aug. 4 and is the largest store that sells rosaries and rosary-related products. Rosary.com also provides information on the rosary’s history, how to pray the rosary, rosary-buying guides, and even how to make your own rosary.
The Catholic Co. spokesperson Jessica Hanson says the mailer had several reasons to buy Rosary.com. First, there’s the spiritual meaning of the domain to more than 1 billion Catholics worldwide, she notes. “The rosary prayers are a very important aspect of our spirituality.”
Second, she continues, there’s the “significance of a common, popular, well-searched .com domain is huge and a very rare opportunity to become available.” And as one of The Catholic Co.’s most popular product categories, “it made good business sense to launch a niche site geared toward the rosary and its related products,” Hanson says.
The domain provides The Catholic Co. with significant search engine optimization opportunities, Hanson says. “None of the major search engines had the domain indexed when we acquired it, and within three weeks of relaunching the site, Rosary.com was on the first page of Google search results under the terms ‘rosary’ and ‘rosaries.’”
Rosary.com has never been a store before, Hanson notes. According to the Wayback Machine at Archive.org, Rosary.com was a prayer site in one form or another from 2000 to 2006 at which time it went up for sale. “It was a parked domain from 2006 to 2009,” she says. “It’s been online for 10 years, but had no sales history at all.”
The Catholic Co. mailed about 1 million catalogs this year, Hanson says. “We doubt Rosary.com will get a rosary specific catalog anytime soon. As a niche cobranded store, Rosary.com customers will receive The Catholic Co. catalogs along with all other customers.”