Owned Channels Waver While .com Buyers Keep Spending: A Lesson for Salon Brands

Beauty marketers are sending mixed signals about the channels they control. A Glossy survey of 90 brand and retailer professionals found that only 46% plan to use owned e-commerce sites this holiday season, down from 69% in 2025, while planned use of owned physical stores fell from 84% to 60%. Yet the same respondents said these channels matter more during the holidays: 67% said owned stores grow in importance, and 49% said the same of owned e-commerce.

For salon groups, spa brands and booking platforms, that gap looks like an opening rather than a trend to follow. In our view, the businesses that keep investing in their own front door, starting with a clear, exact category .com address, will be better placed when attention swings back to controlled environments.

“Brands take their own channels and especially physical stores for granted”

Glossy

The .com still draws serious money

While some marketers ease off owned channels, domain buyers are not. Buyer-side brokerage Lumis, a Florida firm that holds no inventory of its own, has facilitated more than $100 million in domain acquisitions for clients in 2026. Of that activity, .com accounted for 55%, with .ai at 20% and .org at 4%. Names featured in its tally include Zip.com, Factory.com and Monaco.com, short, plain words that describe something.

The aftermarket shows steady demand at smaller price points too. One day of DropCatch auction results totaled $64,712, led by CinqueTerre.com at $26,138, and a Turkish investor reported more than $230k in domain sales over two years. For beauty companies, these figures suggest that buyers at many budget levels still consider .com names worth paying for, though on their own they do not show where prices or supply are heading.

Dot-brands remain a cautionary tale

Some large companies are again trying to build their own extensions. ICANN received at least 345 dot-brand applications in the 2026 round, even though roughly 150 dot-brands from the 2012 round have been canceled, most recently Nippon Life giving up .nissay. Domain Name Wire notes that overall usage has fallen well short of expectations.

For a spa chain or salon franchisor, the practical takeaway is that customers already know how a .com works. An exact category name like SalonandSpa.com needs no explanation, no new habit and no registry of its own to maintain.

Ad spend is rising, so the destination matters

Brands are spending more to reach people. Glossy found that 45% of respondents plan to use CTV and streaming ads this holiday, up from 23%, and planned TV ad use rose from 13% to 33%. Ritual executive Laura Brodie cautioned that streaming is really a full-year commitment rather than a holiday experiment. Large beauty players are also reorganizing around attention: Estée Lauder hired a communications lead to bring a social-first approach across MAC and Bobbi Brown, and Patrick Ta Beauty named a new chief marketing officer and a VP of creative.

As we see it, every streaming spot, social post and press moment eventually points somewhere. When a viewer remembers only the category, a name that matches it captures that intent directly. A-Frame Brands founder Ari Bloom warned that brands tend to take what they own for granted, and in our view that applies to web addresses as much as storefronts.

For salon and spa decision-makers, a few steps follow. Audit whether your main domain matches how clients actually search. Redirect secondary names to one primary site. Treat the domain as a long-term asset, not a line item to trim. None of this guarantees bookings, but it removes friction that paid media alone cannot fix.