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18(a) Describe the mission/purpose of your proposed gTLD

gTLDFull Legal NameE-mail suffixDetail
.SalonDaySmart Softwaredaysmart.comView
1 MISSION⁄PURPOSE

The mission and purpose of the gTLD .SALON is to establish a diverse and global community comprised of millions of personal care professionals, which include a wide array of specialties such as hair, makeup, skin care, nail, tanning, spa, and general beauty industry businesses. The .SALON gTLD will provide an opportunity for those in the personal care industry to expand and market their products and services to meet their individual business plan objectives. Through market research, user polling, and over 13 years of industry experience, DaySmart has gained the intimate knowledge required to help facilitate this opportunity.

As a potential registry operator of .SALON, DaySmart seeks to provide personal care industry professionals from across the world access to their own domain name ending in .SALON. Such domains provide a natural and inherent value in terms of name recognition, Internet search metrics, and overall penetration in Internet marketing and advertising. By providing such benefits, DaySmart believes .SALON will improve the salon industry and help grow the businesses of millions of salon professionals worldwide. The gTLD, .SALON, will also provide a way for small, third world, and emerging countries to acquire a prestigious domain that is geared primarily for the personal care industry.

While the primary audience for .SALON is the personal care industry, which includes a wide array of specialties such as hair, makeup, skin care, nail, tanning, spa, and general beauty, .SALON will not be restricted to those who fall outside these common specialties. Due to its ubiquitous qualities, the salon industry cannot be defined by one culture or by one set of people. Specialties that exist in one part of the world may be completely undiscovered or unknown in another. To account for this diversity, DaySmart will adopt an open registration policy. DaySmart believes this flexibility will allow all salon professionals who believe they are a part of the personal care industry to have access to a domain name of their choice.

1.1 Global Audience
The salon industry is a diverse and far-reaching industry, familiar to practically every market in the world. Indeed, the term ʺSalonʺ is defined similarly in over 20 unique languages and is known by over one-third of the global population. In the United States alone, there are over 900,000 businesses that classify themselves as a salon. There are few gTLDs that can claim such immediate global recognition or provide such widespread global opportunity as .SALON. Over its 13 year history, DaySmart has established a thriving global presence, with a foothold in over 100 countries, including, Canada, Australia, Bermuda, United Kingdom, UAE, Germany, France, New Zealand, South Africa, Ireland, Cayman Islands, Italy, Iceland, Romania, Aruba, Kenya, Mexico, Lebanon, and Saudi Arabia. With its strong global presence, DaySmart believes it is positioned well in ensuring that .SALON penetrates into world markets rapidly to provide all professionals, regardless of region, access to the prestigious domain name of their choice. As a result, the net impact of a .SALON Top Level Domain has a high potential of redefining how the global salon industry and associated businesses achieve their marketing objectives.

1.2 Ability to Achieve the Mission⁄Purpose of .SALON gTLD
DaySmart is well-equipped to vigorously promote and advance .SALON in the personal care industry. Since its inception in 1999, DaySmart has provided one of the world’s leading salon and spa management software programs, Salon Iris(r), to the world market. The current market saturation of DaySmart across its multiple product offerings can be summarized as follows:
- Windows Software Users: Over 30,000.Expected to be 35,000 by Jan 2013
- Mobile application users: Over 35,000.Expected to by 55,000 by Jan 2013
- Cloud based: Currently 10,000.Expected to be 30,000 by Jan 2013
- Social media: Currently 8,000.Expected to be 14,000 by Jan 2013

DaySmart has vast experience providing technical expertise and business guidance to professionals in the personal care industry, and has acquired valuable insight on the everyday operations, concerns, and structure of this dynamic market sector. Through this insight, DaySmart has gained the unique ability to understand the diverse audiences that could benefit from the launch of .SALON, and furthermore, how to reach those audiences through effective marketing strategies. Initial marketing will begin with, but is not limited to, direct communication with Salon Iris(r) users. The Salon Iris(r) brand also has a definitive web presence, which will be used to assist DaySmart in building the image of .SALON. Owning a .SALON domain will one day add the final stamp of legitimacy to any serious business, one that consumers will immediately recognize.

DaySmart has not only become a trusted service provider to the salon industry, but it has also become one of its most recognized providers, in recent years. This is evidenced by the numerous awards that Salon Iris Software(r) received from the users of our products:
- American Salon magazine: “Professional’s Choice Award” in the Best Software category
- Nails magazine: “Reader’s Choice Award” in the Best Software category
- Launchpad magazine: “Reader’s Choice Award” in the Best Software category
These awards confirm DaySmartʹs leadership status in the personal care industry and serve as an affirmation to all potential registrants that the .SALON domain is in very capable hands.

DaySmart is not only confident in its ability to ensure the successful deployment and implementation of .SALON, it is also confident in its own ability to provide a stable, reliable, and secure TLD to the web. DaySmart is a well-established, successful technology company that continues to see stable growth year after year. Since it was founded, DaySmart has grown every year, with the most recent year, 2011, seeing a 35 percent increase. With the increased popularity and market penetration of DaySmart’s flagship software product, Salon Iris(r), DaySmart has been able to further expand its marketing, development, and product offerings, thus resulting in further business growth. This exceptional growth and attractive business model has earned DaySmart many company awards, including the following:
- Named one of the Fastest Growing Companies in America by Inc. magazine
- Listed in Michigan’s 50 Companies to Watch
- University of Michigan Dearborn’s Co-op Employer of the Year award for 2009 (past winners include NASA and Ford)

In its years developing software for various platforms, including Windows application development, iPhone, Android, Cloud-based, and web application projects, DaySmart has gained extensive and valuable experience developing software across multiple platforms, along with in-depth management of public-facing servers and communication systems.

With a longstanding and successful background in both the technology and the personal care industries, DaySmart is best capable of building, and continually reinforcing the .SALON mission statement: to establish a gTLD for those associated with the personal care industry.
gTLDFull Legal NameE-mail suffixDetail
.restaurantSnow Avenue, LLCdonuts.coView
Q18A CHAR: 7985

ABOUT DONUTS
Donuts Inc. is the parent applicant for this and multiple other TLDs. The company intends to increase competition and consumer choice at the top level. It will operate these carefully selected TLDs safely and securely in a shared resources business model. To achieve its objectives, Donuts has recruited seasoned executive management with proven track records of excellence in the industry. In addition to this business and operational experience, the Donuts team also has contributed broadly to industry policymaking and regulation, successfully launched TLDs, built industry-leading companies from the ground up, and brought innovation, value and choice to the domain name marketplace.

DONUTS’ PLACE WITHIN ICANN’S MISSION
ICANN and the new TLD program share the following purposes:
1. to make sure that the Internet remains as safe, stable and secure as possible, while
2. helping to ensure there is a vibrant competitive marketplace to efficiently bring the benefits of the namespace to registrants and users alike.

ICANN harnesses the power of private enterprise to bring forth these public benefits. While pursuing its interests, Donuts helps ICANN accomplish its objectives by:

1. Significantly widening competition and choice in Internet identities with hundreds of new top-level domain choices;
2. Providing innovative, robust, and easy-to-use new services, names and tools for users, registrants, registrars, and registries while at the same time safeguarding the rights of others;
3. Designing, launching, and securely operating carefully selected TLDs in multiple languages and character sets; and
4. Providing a financially robust corporate umbrella under which its new TLDs will be protected and can thrive.

ABOUT DONUTS’ RESOURCES
Donuts’ financial resources are extensive. The company has raised more than US$100 million from a number of capital sources including multiple multi-billion dollar venture capital and private equity funds, a top-tier bank, and other well-capitalized investors. Should circumstances warrant, Donuts is prepared to raise additional funding from current or new investors. Donuts also has in place pre-funded, Continued Operations Instruments to protect future registrants. These resource commitments mean Donuts has the capability and intent to launch, expand and operate its TLDs in a secure manner, and to properly protect Internet users and rights-holders from potential abuse.

Donuts firmly believes a capable and skilled organization will operate multiple TLDs and benefit Internet users by:

1. Providing the operational and financial stability necessary for TLDs of all sizes, but particularly for those with smaller volume (which are more likely to succeed within a shared resources and shared services model);
2. Competing more powerfully against incumbent gTLDs; and
3. More thoroughly and uniformly executing consumer and rights holder protections.

THIS TLD
This TLD is attractive and useful to end-users as it better facilitates search, self-expression, information sharing and the provision of legitimate goods and services. Along with the other TLDs in the Donuts family, this TLD will provide Internet users with opportunities for online identities and expression that do not currently exist. In doing so, the TLD will introduce significant consumer choice and competition to the Internet namespace – the very purpose of ICANN’s new TLD program.

This TLD is a generic term and its second level names will be attractive to a variety of Internet users. Making this TLD available to a broad audience of registrants is consistent with the competition goals of the New TLD expansion program, and consistent with ICANN’s objective of maximizing Internet participation. Donuts believes in an open Internet and, accordingly, we will encourage inclusiveness in the registration policies for this TLD. In order to avoid harm to legitimate registrants, Donuts will not artificially deny access, on the basis of identity alone (without legal cause), to a TLD that represents a generic form of activity and expression.

DONUTS’ APPROACH TO PROTECTIONS
No entity, or group of entities, has exclusive rights to own or register second level names in this TLD. There are superior ways to minimize the potential abuse of second level names, and in this application Donuts will describe and commit to an extensive array of protections against abuse, including protections against the abuse of trademark rights.

We recognize some applicants seek to address harms by constraining access to the registration of second level names. However, we believe attempts to limit abuse by limiting registrant eligibility is unnecessarily restrictive and harms users by denying access to many legitimate registrants. Restrictions on second level domain eligibility would prevent law-abiding individuals and organizations from participating in a space to which they are legitimately connected, and would inhibit the sort of positive innovation we intend to see in this TLD. As detailed throughout this application, we have struck the correct balance between consumer and business safety, and open access to second level names.

By applying our array of protection mechanisms, Donuts will make this TLD a place for Internet users that is far safer than existing TLDs. Donuts will strive to operate this TLD with fewer incidences of fraud and abuse than occur in incumbent TLDs. In addition, Donuts commits to work toward a downward trend in such incidents.

OUR PROTECTIONS
Donuts has consulted with and evaluated the ideas of international law enforcement, consumer privacy advocacy organizations, intellectual property interests and other Internet industry groups to create a set of protections that far exceed those in existing TLDs, and bring to the Internet namespace nearly two dozen new rights and protection mechanisms to raise user safety and protection to a new level.

These include eight, innovative and forceful mechanisms and resources that far exceed the already powerful protections in the applicant guidebook. These are:

1. Periodic audit of WhoIs data for accuracy;
2. Remediation of inaccurate Whois data, including takedown, if warranted;
3. A new Domain Protected Marks List (DPML) product for trademark protection;
4. A new Claims Plus product for trademark protection;
5. Terms of use that prohibit illegal or abusive activity;
6. Limitations on domain proxy and privacy service;
7. Published policies and procedures that define abusive activity; and
8. Proper resourcing for all of the functions above.

They also include fourteen new measures that were developed specifically by ICANN for the new TLD process. These are:

1. Controls to ensure proper access to domain management functions;
2. 24⁄7⁄365 abuse point of contact at registry;
3. Procedures for handling complaints of illegal or abusive activity, including remediation and takedown processes;
4. Thick WhoIs;
5. Use of the Trademark Clearinghouse;
6. A Sunrise process;
7. A Trademark Claims process;
8. Adherence to the Uniform Rapid Suspension system;
9. Adherence to the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy;
10. Adherence to the Post Delegation Dispute Resolution Policy;
11. Detailed security policies and procedures;
12. Strong security controls for access, threat analysis and audit;
13. Implementation DNSSEC; and
14. Measures for the prevention of orphan glue records.

DONUTS’ INTENTION FOR THIS TLD
As a senior government authority has recently said, “a successful applicant is entrusted with operating a critical piece of global Internet infrastructure.” Donuts’ plan and intent is for this TLD to serve the international community by bringing new users online through opportunities for economic growth, increased productivity, the exchange of ideas and information and greater self-expression.