High authority brand expanding product line, domain question

[advancedSemiotics]

Hi MOZers,

I've been given a handy little domain puzzle to deal with and would love insight from the community.  Here's the situation:

We're retailers of one specific, big, nationally known product.  Let's pretend it's the Snuggee (IT'S NOT).  People search for it and buy it from our site, or from Amazon or other retailers that we distribute it to.

We're about to expand to carry a bunch of related, but different products - so from a one-product brand to 5 or 6 different items, relating to different keyword searches.  Imagine Snuggee people want to start selling a whole bunch of products that solve the same needs of warming the front of your body and making you look silly.

The owners want to change the main domain from [specific product] to [name similar to specific product, but is more general].  What concerns me is how to handle the fame of the branded product in terms of domain names.  Current domain, based on that product, has a ton of links and a decent age.  Owners are thinking to redirect everything to fresh new unestablished domain.  While I know 301s will pass most link value, it will also be a home page that will be about a bunch of products - not just that main known one.  In fact, we're considering making a URL for each product as landing page, of which old famous product would be one of 5 or 6 pages.

Two main options we're considering right now:

1. Keep old domain as a doorway page featuring just old product, with same look and feel, and from which any links would point to the new domain.  Try to keep this as ranking for top result for this search, which should be easy.

2. Unify everything under new domain, with old product being featured on a separate page / subdirectory.  Hope that new home page still can rank pretty well for our old product, even though it will be talking about other products now as well.

What we'd stand to lose would be the SERP for old products featuring too many big box retailers that sell our stuff and take a chunk out of our margins.  The goal is to help us become known for many things, while still being always the best search result for what we're already known for.

Which of those two options seem best, or is there another I'm missing altogether?

Thank you!

[TakeshiYoung]

This is a pretty complex question that goes beyond just SEO and extends to branding and business strategy, so there are no simple answers here.

I personally think having a single site is easier to manage, and since all the products are related, it could lead to additional sales as well.

Even though some link equity is lost through 301 redirects, I don't see 3rd party retailers outranking your new site for "snugees" just because you switch from "snugees.com" to "snugeebrands.com".

Just create a relevant landing page specifically for snugees, and it should continue to rank well, and the other products should benefit from the link juice that is being transferred over from the old site.

[advancedSemiotics]

Makes sense.  Thank you for the reply!  Now the obstacle is convincing the owners of the company to put some actual crawlable content on the landing page of old product.