18.1 Mission and Purpose of .BESTBUY
BBY Solutions, Inc. is the intellectual property subsidiary of Best Buy Co., Inc. (“Best Buy”) the multinational retailer of consumer electronics, home office products, entertainment products, appliances, and related services. Best Buy has over 1,000 retail locations in the United States alone, employs approximately 130,000 individuals worldwide, and has operations across North America and Europe.
Best Buy operates under a number of brand names including Best Buy, Best Buy Mobile, Five Star, Future Shop, Geek Squad, Magnolia Audio Video, and others.
Recognizing the potential dynamic evolution of a .BESTBUY gTLD as a trusted brand namespace, Best Buy has decided to use a wholly owned subsidiary, BBY Solutions, Inc. (ʺBBY Solutionsʺ) as the entity to file this application and bring the .BESTBUY gTLD to market.
The intended future mission and purpose of the .BESTBUY gTLD is to serve as a trusted, hierarchical, and intuitive namespace provided by Best Buy for Best Buy’s customers, and Internet users in general.
Although ICANN has not specifically recognized a .BRAND gTLD specification in the current version of the Applicant Guidebook, it is widely anticipated within the brand-owner community that this will become a specialty subset of gTLDs. The .BESTBUY gTLD is intended to be one of those .BRAND gTLDs, with the goal of protecting Best Buy’s online presence and identity, expanding its marketing and promotion efforts, providing a secure channel for online products and services, and offering a platform through which to consolidate many of the intellectual property activities of Best Buy.
BBY Solutions intends to initially limit registration and use of domain names within the .BESTBUY gTLD to Best Buy and its qualified subsidiaries and affiliates. This initial limited use will allow BBY Solutions to establish its operations and achieve full sustainability. This limited distribution, coupled with the other requirements set forth in Specification 9 of the template Registry Agreement, is intended to exempt BBY Solutions from its annual Code of Conduct Compliance requirements.
After Stage 3 (see below), Best Buy will evaluate whether opportunities exist to carry out the business strategy for the .BESTBUY gTLD through expansion that continues the sustainable operations of the registry through fee-based registrations to parties other than Best Buy and its qualified subsidiaries and affiliates.
BBY Solutions currently plans a four-stage rollout for the .BEST BUY gTLD. The dates of these stages are subject to change depending upon business, strategic, and industry factors at the time.
1. Stage 1
The initial stage of implementation of the gTLD will involve BBY Solutions registering a limited number of .BESTBUY second-level domain names.
This initial use will provide Best Buy’s IT and security personnel the time to run a number of tests to ensure seamless and secure access using the .BESTBUY gTLD domain names, interoperability with various software and Web-based applications, and unbroken and secure use of all names. This initial allocation will also allow the appropriate Best Buy staff to coordinate with the internal and external staff responsible for the application, delegation, and setup phases of the .BESTBUY gTLD to ensure a proper transition from delegation to full operation.
2. Stage 2
Once all testing has been successfully completed, BBY Solutions will begin allocating domain names in .BESTBUY for more widespread internal corporate use. During this same period of time, Best Buy will begin evaluating strategies to drive traffic to the .BESTBUY gTLD.
It is in Stage 2 that Best Buy will evaluate expanding the operations of the .BESTBUY gTLD to permit registration by licensees and strategic partners. Should an assessment of its expansion strategy lead to a decision to extend registration rights to other parties, this expansion is currently planned to take place during Stage 3, and likely after the first three years of operation. However, any expansion would be conditioned upon a review of Specification 9 (Registry Code of Conduct) set forth in the template Registry Agreement to ensure compliance with BBY Solutions’ business model.
3. Stage 3
Depending upon the analysis of evaluations undertaken in Stage 2, Best Buy may begin to implement the migration of Internet traffic away from the TLDs in which Best Buy’s domain names are currently registered, and toward the .BESTBUY gTLD. It is in this stage that BBY Solutions may also implement Best Buy’s decision to extend registration rights to licensees and strategic partners, depending upon compliance with Specification 9 as noted above.
After consideration of the following factors: analysis of Best Buy’s existing domain name portfolio, internal analysis of marketing initiatives, and the fact that Best Buy will have full control over the number of registrations in the .BESTBUY gTLD namespace, BBY Solutions is confident that the number of domain name registrations will be less than 10,000 in the first five years of operation.
4. Stage 4
Based on its experience during the initial stages of operation, and based on its experience with any expansion implemented in Stage 3, BBY Solutions and Best Buy will assess whether their business plan and expansion strategy should be augmented by extending registration rights to a broader class of registrants, including potential suppliers, partners, or customers. It is anticipated by Best Buy that changes to the domain name industry, and particularly the impact of .BRAND gTLDs, will take at least five years to be realized and assessed.
Any decision to expand the gTLDs beyond corporate and qualified subsidiary⁄affiliate use will take into account this experience as well as the technical analysis of potential expansion.
The potential use of the .BESTBUY gTLD by these or other business segments will primarily be driven by Best Buy’s future business strategies.
Utilizing current projections based upon Best Buyʹs existing businesses, future business plans, current domain name portfolio, and other strategic factors, BBY Solutions estimates that second-level domain name registrations will be in line with the projections set forth in the financial template provided in the response to Question 46 of this application.
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