Classic Engineering has a cool domain name, but founder Eduardo Umaña sometimes has to explain it to people.
A couple weeks ago I profiled Huemor, a company that moved from a .com domain name to the new top level domain .Rocks.
Today I’m going to look at a more likely scenario: a company choosing a new top level domain name because the .com was registered already.
Eduardo Umaña chose the name Classic Engineering for his product design studio. But when he went to register the domain name, he found that ClassicEngineering.com was already taken.
Then Umaña found that Classic.Engineering was available, so he registered the domain name. He set up a site on the domain to show off his first product, a line of watches.
“It is a really cool domain to own, but unfortunately, people are not aware of these new kinds of domains,” Umaña told Domain Name Wire. “I have issues of people attempting to reach classic.engineering.com. Once I explain that ‘.engineering’ is the new ‘.com’ people usually say something like ‘cool!’ and get the idea behind it.”
Umaña has also run into the issue of universal acceptance, especially with his @classic.engineering email address.
“Unfortunately, it is not recognized as a valid email when filling out forms or registering for some online services,” he said.
He ends up using a .com email address in these cases.
User awareness and universal acceptance are two big issues new domain names have to overcome, and I’m sure Umaña’s experience is similar to other early adopters.
Kate says
“Unfortunately, it is not recognized as a valid email when filling out forms or registering for some online services,”
You’d get the same experience trying to sign up somewhere with an IDN 😉
Unfortunately existing web forms are just not prepared to handle the complexity.
Some web forms cannot even recognize subdomains in .com…
John says
I’ve had this experience a few times too, where I try to get people to visit a .gTLD site only to have them say in virtually the same words:
“What, no .com or anything?”
No matter how explicit I’ve been.
The players on the registry side of the industry need to band together and pay for more public awareness, otherwise it would be a shame if things became the way it is for .US. Look at how it’s been for .US all these years since April 2002. The American public practically doesn’t even know it exists yet and doesn’t care, no thanks to Neustar. So I see no reason why it won’t be that way for new gTLDs unless the registries do more than the near nothing Neustar has done for .US.
Steve says
What I find perplexing here:
1) Classic Engineering is a long name for a company, not exactly brandable
2) Why not purchase classicengineering.com to avoid the various problems he’s encountered — can’t be worth more than 1 K
3) His product is watches — so either establish a brand or have something with “watch” in the name
Excuse my input, but I’ve names drugs (pharma) that have had over $125 Billion in sales, so I know about naming. I’m an amateur when it comes to domains, but I do know branding
janedoe says
Because classicengineering.cim is in use so your view that it is wirth 1k is invalid
CSW says
Hoo ah. Definitely losing sympathy for this plaintive cry… If you choose a generic name like this, not in the dot-com? Wipe your nose and shut your piehole, because you’re selfish, dim, and lazy both.
The build-out of the TLD system had the involvement of certifiable visionaries. The air was rare and pure then, and this issue had the ear and the interest of dewy-eyed, unpaid TED talkers—and their blueprint operates and will continue to operate above the noise created by a deluge of follow-on gTLD opportunists. Trust the route that is not ‘advertised at you.’
When you hear the phrase, ‘there are 4.6 QUADRILLION ten character dot-com options,’ what does that tell you, as an entrepreneur? It should tell you, use a dot-com. It is the global commercial suffix. And call your naming options legion, for they are many.
They are effectively infinite. For the non-dot-com company, the question becomes, who do you think you are that your customers have to sacrifice ease and security for your clueless torpor? Don’t answer, it will be rhetorical in 60 seconds.
And the dot-com was designed to operate as a handmaiden to the Lanham Act. YourGenericName.engineering? No, your choice is expensive to consumers and taxpayers. If you want to painlessly and cheaply and permanently use the dot-com to help you secure some trademark rights and market presence, it is there for you. Just mint a fresh name and register it–26 characters and an Esperanto dictionary and you’re sorted. (India is warping to your English woof because they’re multilingual, and China wants to sell to them, too, so congratulations, laziest-common-denominators! It’s Englishish for a healthy market share of win.) Want something more simplistic? Then buy it from a predecessor—TMs and companies and domains rise and fall and change hands in a minute. Or, if you insist on being the 2,501st person to name your company ‘Delta,’ fine, just expect to pay a little for SEO, don’t cry about it.
In the US we think it’s awkward pretension to use non-English words in conversation, but the rest of the world is generations ahead of us in integrating languages. Hinglish, Pinyin—our sluggishness is embarrassing. Think and operate beyond shampoo and chow mein and je t’aime, because everybody else does.
Laszlo Toth, Jr. says
“When you hear the phrase, ‘there are 4.6 QUADRILLION ten character dot-com options,’ what does that tell you, as an entrepreneur?”
It tells me someone knows how to punch the keys of a calculator, but knows very little about how human beings attach meanings to words in the real world.
Christopher Hofman Laursen says
CSW, you must have lot invested in .com domains ;). Who types in a domain name today? I think we have all become sufficiently digital to Google the company name. This brand name is looong and clumsy, which has to be taken into consideration as well, when he spells his domain name to clients. To give you an example of a brand and a not-com domain name which work is a great startup here in Denmark called Lix Technologies (digitalizing study books), and they don’t have to spell their domain lix.tech for anyone. It’s a beauty of a domain name.
Andrew Allemann says
Actually, if you told me a company was Lix dot tech, I’d think it was licks.tech
CSW says
@Christopher
The air was so thin up there on my high horse that I became inarticulate… I agree, an emphatic no to names like classicengineering.anything. As you say, too long. Not to mention, difficult to TM protect, expensive SEO, and forgettably generic. Innovative naming in the dotcom (for instance, short, coined names like Lix) addresses these problems.
Lix is a great name. Sexy, short, plays on the Latin…it was so good they decided to make do with .tech. They can to some extent because they serve an edu niche. Hope they never get curious about other markets.
We’re all sufficiently digital to Google…but who’s banking on Google’s bilge pumps? Only a fraction of India and China are trading online to the extent they will be in five years, and they’re ten times the US population. (There are already thousands of ‘omni’ TMs, etc., coexisting in the US alone.)
April says
The issue with .com is that QUALITY domains, especially for entrepreneurs aren’t available. It’s not just an issue of quantity but of quality as well. So for the sake of this scenario… classicengineering.com is already a lengthy domain, and on top of that its taken. It does not make sense to add more letters/words just for the sake of securing a dot-com. That will do nothing but confuse/diminish a brand. Classic.engineering — certainly provides more clarity and choice. How does that make customers sacrifice ease and security? If anything it further validates a business because customers will know if it ends in a particular .WORD then its your business and not a counterfeit. The solution absolutely does not involve adding random words to a desired domain name in order to secure a .com. It’s just bad business.
CSW says
Re counterfeits/spoof sites/unethical providers in general, the new gTLDs are cheap and numerous–that introduces risk for consumers. A prestigious dot-com adds security–one glances up to verify the page is Paypal.com, Square.com, Chase.com, and one enters financial data. We run security checks like this reflexively every day.
8ce says
How about if you buy 8CE.com 8 is a lucky number for Chinese and CE is an abbreviation to Classic Engineering and it is a dot com.
Captain Obvious says
GTLD = Good To Lose Dollars