Material World

Today my colleague Andrew Hill has written a column about the controversy surrounding internet suffixes — and the companies that exploit them — and reading it, I felt a startling sense of déjà vu. Yesterday I was at a Financo Retail Seminar listening to Chris Burch bemoan the exact same issue, though from a somewhat different perspective and in somewhat more colourful language.

Mr Burch, for those who don’t know, is the investor who started Tory Burch — the fashion company run by his former wife — and is in the process of launching nine, count ‘em, brands, including a luxury furniture department store (9 Christopher) and an accessible luxury concept store (C Wonder). The plan is to focus on the US, followed by Asia. Mr Burch is less keen on Europe, though he did say in his experience bad economic times were in fact good times to launch, and he is troubled by the internet situation.

To be specific: he was on stage complaining about the threat from counterfeiters buying up web addresses (toryburch.it, tburch.com, and so on) and offering fake branded goods. He said “there should be legislation”.

Unfortunately, he didn’t say what kind, and the moderator didn’t ask him (that was a mistake), nor did he address the issue of cross-border legalities, and the fact you can’t enforce, say, US law in China. It was also clear that Mr Burch saw himself as something of a provocateur on stage (he was establishing his brand) and said other ear-catching things like: “the guys who broke into Zappos”, the online retailer, and hacked 24m accounts could be “from a foreign country,” and that, though the consumer who walked into the C Wonder store might think it “looked good, it’s actually a fucking disaster.”

Still, his comments about the domain name issue resonate, especially as they underscore the fact that:

1. If you have a new, unknown brand, the difficulties of protecting the name are that much greater, as its defining characteristics are unclear; and
2. If you have a brand concentrated on one geographic region, clever hackers from another can wreak havoc online.

So here’s what I wonder: what if industries or trade/lobbying organisations get together to create their own suffixes? What if they took the issue out of the corporate world (there are a number of companies that have been born to attempt to buy and sell domain names)? How about .lux, for example? Or .mode? They could be used as a signal to consumers — a map, almost, much as .edu signifies educational institutions, and .gov signifies the obvious. Leave .com and .org — and all the arguments and tussles therein — to those who just don’t know any better.

NB: the Financo seminar is a little like a boys club, with most major American retailers in attendance, and as a result some guards go down and some very odd things issue forth from CEO’s mouths. Mr Burch’s comments above are a case in point, but there were more. My personal favourite came courtesy of Walter Robb, CEO of Whole Foods, who provided the audience with this choice metaphor: “the internet is marching [across the consumer landscape] like a voracious bug.” The clear implication: let’s smash it!