Ice.com Buys Diamond.com

Ice.com, a Montreal-based, mostly mass-market Internet jewelry site, has purchased diamond.com, the domain and site previously owned by odimo.com.

Ice purchased Odimo’s rights to the domain name www.diamond.com and related trademarks for $7.5 million, and diamond and jewelry inventory and related packaging for another $2 million.

The transaction comes shortly after Ice completed an external financing round from the venture capital firm Ignition Partners.

Odimo also announced that Alan Lipton will step down as president and chief executive officer. He will remain as chairman of the board of directors. Jeff Kornblum, currently chief operating officer, will relace Lipton as CEO and focus on the company’s other domain names, ashford.com and worldofwatches.com.

“The watch and luxury categories are operations we believe can be run more efficiently due to their lower cost structure.” Lipton said in a statement.

Odimo, partially owned by Israeli sightholder R. Steinmetz, has had a bumpy ride since it went public with a disappointing IPO in 2004. In its first quarter, sales decreased 17.7 percent and the company lost $3.8 million. Nasdaq sent it a notice warning it was in danger of being delisted in May.

As a result of the sale, Odimo is now prohibited from engaging in the online retail sale of jewelry and diamonds.

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