I was actually running a hosting company in 2006 and we had a lot of domains under management at eNom. ENom charged us $8.95 per domain per year, and we charged our customers $15 per year for registration through us. (I went back and looked up our prices back then just for this post.)
Domains haven't been $70 each since around 1996 or so.
The brand grew from there. That's why Namecheap is still called Namecheap.
Disclosure: Namecheap employee/personal experience