Over 1,000 people attended Global Domain Summit this month.
By all accounts, it sounds like this month’s Global Domain Summit in Hangzhou was a big success. More than 1,000 people attended.
Pinky Brand of ChopChop and TLD Registry released a video with scenes from the conference and the auction. The video also includes an interview with Yuling Huang, head of domain division at BizCN.com and the conference organizer.
2016 Global Domain Summit from Pinkard Brand on Vimeo.
If you’re interested in learning more about the Chinese market for domain names, it’s probably worth making the trip to a domain conference there. World Domain Conference is taking place in Wuzhen, Zhejiang province, next month. And although it’s not mainland China, the DomainFest conference in Hong Kong this September is sure to draw a number of Chinese domainers.
gene says
Thanks for posting such a great video, Andrew.
To all the commenters who continue to question these auction results…if JUST 10% of the sales from this auction ultimately ‘close,’ based on the stated, 27mm USD total, that’s nearly DOUBLE the previous auction record of ~ 1.5mm USD.
So it’s impossible to argue with that sort of success.
pinkybrand says
Yes thanks to Andrew for posting our video.
I’m told that it’s not unusual in China for the Ts & Cs in auction proceedings to have a provision whereby the high bidder and/or seller can walk away, and I’m not entirely certain as under what precise conditions would allow that to happen.
But I will say the scale of nearly everything in China boggles the mind, physical and digital. I agree that if even a fraction of this $27M USD actually came through, in the end it shows how much money is being thrown towards the secondary market at present.
Also there can be some smoke and mirrors in this business and not all may actually be as it appears, especially to newbies—and there are a lot of newbies entering the market in China, which IMHO could foster future secondary market price instability and serious annual renewal % issues for some new gTLD operators and their registrars.
ada says
1000 people and there arem1,35 billion Chinese – yeah very popular in China
Joseph Peterson says
That’s about as big as NamesCon, which was setting records with 900 attendees as of December 2015. NamesCon is expecting 1400 attendees next January, I believe. Domain conferences don’t fill stadiums.
By all accounts, China has a lot of (mostly new) domainers. Their investment habits may be questionable, but their existence isn’t. For better and for worse, the community in China has done a better job popularizing domaining than we in the West have done. From my vantage point, there’s a lot of facile get-rich-quick thinking bound up in the Chinese market. But there’s undeniable appeal and broad accessibility in that proposition.
A Mitchell says
Chinese companies struggling to gain recognition outside of China would be well served to consider re-branding with domains that are more portable, memorable and explainable than what currently passes as an acceptable moniker.
For example, China is one of the biggest (if not the biggest) source of cut flowers that are imported into the US, yet all top five mainland companies in this space are using names that hold no inherent appeal for wholesale buyers in the US. For Western buyers, there is nothing to distinguish one piece of soggy milktoast from another. The first Chinese flower exporter to stand up and grab an attractive moniker will gain an early advantage over its competitors. However, this is more likely to happen with a smaller company, perhaps in the range of a 6-10th largest exporter.
In part, Chinese domain conferences are about branding. These conferences can and should inspire more entrepreneurial efforts to reach brand managers in second-tier companies.
Growing up in Hong Kong during the Cultural Revolution, the elite colonial schools taught French but not Mandarin, leaving me and my peers at a disadvantage in today’s China-centric business environments. However, the castle still holds a few dragon eggs waiting to be hatched.
The following examples typify the sort of brand evolution that is expected to become more pronounced before the end of the decade:
ChinaEngineering.com
ChinaWarehousing.com
ChinaIntepreter.com
ChinaSavingsBank.com
Zho.co (a company where Chinese is spoken)