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

Prototypical answer:

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.

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