When to spin off to a new company?

[Tonearm]

I have an online store that has 20 categories of products. Everything that we carry in those categories has a common theme. What I'm grappling with right now, is how you figure out when a category of products should have its own store. Here's an example:

Let's say I have BlueStore.com, and I carry blue tables, blue chairs, blue posters, and blue marbles. I'm wondering if it would be smarter to make blue clocks a new category in my blue-oriented store or to make BlueClocks.com.

Does anyone have any advice on this in a general way? Am I making sense?

[Essex_boy]

Keep it simple, if its a blue themed store then blue products through.

Just updating several stores is a nightmare.

[khuntley]

I agree. Even if blue clocks is responsible for 50% of total sales I would just create one highly optimized page for blue clocks to make sure more people found you for the item.

With multiple sites there are just more headaches. Besides updating like Essex_boy said, there is credit card processing (what to have appear on statement for each domain?), SEO campaigns for each domain, more email addresses to confuse, etc..

The rule of thumb is one domain per theme, i.e. "blue."