XYZ launches its beauty-themed gTLDs with slashed prices

XYZ.com is readying the launch of its four recently acquired beauty-themed gTLDs, along with one other.

.skin, .hair .makeup and .beauty entered their sunrise periods today, where they will stay until February 10.

All four were acquired from L’Oreal earlier this year, but .makeup was the only one that had launched and gone through its mandatory sunrise.

Despite this, XYZ is putting .makeup through what it calls a “trademark owner landrush”, where domains will cost IP owners about a grand.

That’s actually a lot cheaper than the price L’Oreal had the domains at during general availability — deterrent pricing of around $5,500 wholesale per year.

It looks like all four domains in this mini-portfolio will be priced around the $20 mark at registrars during general availability, which is due to begin March 2.

There’s also going to be an Early Access Period for seven days from February 10.

All of the above also applies to .quest, which XYZ acquired from a Hong Kong multilevel marketing firm a year ago. XYZ is marketing it as a TLD for “gurus, knowledgeable experts, and authorities in any field”.

XYZ expands gTLD stable as L’Oreal exits the domain game

XYZ.com has acquired four new gTLDs from the cosmetics company L’Oreal.
The portfolio registry expanded its stable with the additions of .makeup, .beauty, .hair and .skin, all of which had their contracts change hands last month, ICANN records show.
XYZ seems to have told Domain Name Wire last week that it plans to relaunch its new acquisitions this year alongside another recent purchase, .quest (sorry for the delay, Andrew, I’ve been sick).
For L’Oreal, the deal marks the end of its lofty ambitions in the new gTLD space. The company applied for 14 strings back in 2012, a mixture of generic dictionary words and brands.
Now, none remain.
A bunch of its dot-brand applications were dumped prior to contract signing. The others were turned off, unused, after L’Oreal asked ICANN to terminate its contracts.
The four non-branded strings XYZ picked up were originally intended as “closed generics” — an attempt to close competitors out of the market for industry-relevant keywords — but that was scuppered when ICANN decided to ban the concept.
L’Oreal attempted to worm its way around the ban by pricing domains at $5,500 wholesale and imposing extremely restrictive registration policies. This was pretty effective at warding off unwanted sales.
But the company did actually attempt something fairly innovative with .makeup, as I documented in 2017, registering the names of a couple hundred beauty-obsessed social media influencers in an attempt to create a registry-owned social media portal focused on pushing L’Oreal products.
The hub site, at welove.makeup, now bounces web visitors to makeup.com.
To the best of my knowledge, L’Oreal didn’t do anything with its other generics.
Still, L’Oreal’s loss is XYZ’s gain. All four are fairly strong strings that could find a market, in my view.
XYZ now has 13 gTLDs under direct contract (12 of which were acquired post-2012) and partial stakes, with Uniregistry, in three others.

L’Oreal is using “closed generic” .makeup in an interesting way

What do you call a registry that defensively registers names on behalf of the very people that would be its most likely customers if the TLD weren’t so hideously overpriced?
L’Oreal, apparently.
About half of its .makeup new gTLD comprises the names or nicknames of social media “influencers” in the make-up scene, and they all seem to belong to the registry.
Ironically, these are precisely the kind of people you’d expect to actually go out and register .makeup domains, if they didn’t cost close to $7,000 a pop.
L’Oreal put a $5,500 wholesale price-tag on .makeup domains, evidently as a Plan B to avoid actually having to sell names to people, after its original plan to keep the string as a “closed generic” failed due to ICANN politicking.
As you might expect, uptake has been minimal. The zone file currently has about 266 domains in it.
Beyond L’Oreal itself, there are defensive registrations by companies not remotely related to the make-up industry, such as BMW and Intuit, and registrations by competing companies in the cosmetics industry, such as Christian Dior and Estee Lauder.
But there are also something like 150 .makeup domains that were all registered at the same time, this April, representing the names and social media handles of young women who post YouTube videos about makeup for their often thousands of subscribers.
It turns out these women are all participants (willing, it seems) in WeLove.Makeup, a web site created by L’Oreal to promote its products.
The site is basically a social media aggregator. Each “influencer” has their own page, populated by their posts from YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, and such. It’s maintained by Findie, which specializes in that kind of thing.
The domains matching the participants names do not resolve to the site, however. They’re all registered to L’Oreal’s registry management partner Fairwinds and resolve to ad-free registrar parking pages.
The names were registered via 101Domain, which prices .makeup names at $6,999, but I’ve no idea what payment arrangement Fairwinds/L’Oreal has for this kind of thing.
This is what a wannabe closed generic can look like, it seems — the registry pricing its customers out of the market then registering their names on their behalf anyway.
Is this “innovation”?

L’Oreal shows cards on former “closed generic” gTLDs

Want to register a .beauty or .makeup domain name? L’Oreal will get to decide unilaterally whether “you’re worth it”.
The cosmetics maker has released the registration policies for its first former “closed generic” gTLD, .makeup, and they’re among the most restrictive in the industry.
Free speech appears to be the first victim of the policy — “gripe sites” are explicitly banned in the same breath as cybersquatting, 419 scams and the sale of counterfeit goods.
Domain investors and those who would hide their identity behind Whois privacy services appear to be unwelcome, too.
But perhaps most significantly, L’Oreal has also given itself the right to decide, in its sole discretion, whether a would-be registrant is eligible to own a .makeup domain.
Its launch policy reads:

Registrant Eligibility Requirements
To support the mission and purpose of the TLD, in order to register or renew a domain name in the TLD, Applicants must (as determined by the Registry in its sole and exclusive right):

• Own, be connected to, employed by, associated with, or affiliated with a company that provides makeup and/or cosmetics related products, services, news, and/or content; or (ii) be an individual, association, or entity that has a meaningful nexus (as determined by the Registry in its sole discretion) with the cosmetics industry; and
• Possess a bona fide intention to use the domain name in supporting the mission and purpose of the TLD.

Would-be registrants have to submit an “application” for the domain they want, and L’Oreal gets to decide whether to approve it or not.
Whether L’Oreal chooses to apply liberal or conservative standards here remains to be seen.
Like most new gTLD registries, the company plans to reserve many domains for the use of itself, partners, or future release.
The policies also give L’Oreal broad discretion to suspend or terminate names it decides violate the terms of the registration policy, which it says it can amend and retroactively apply at any time.
Using the domain counter to the mission statement of the gTLD is a violation. The mission statement reads:

The mission and purpose of the TLD is first and foremost to promote the beauty, makeup and cosmetics segments, through meaningful engagement with manufacturers, beauty enthusiasts, consumers, and retailers, using a domain space intended for use by individuals and/or companies within or associated with the various industries that provide, utilize, or bear a recognizable connection to makeup and cosmetic products and/or services.

L’Oreal has defined gripe sites — sites established primarily to criticize — as a security and stability concern that “may put the security of any Registrant or user at risk”, banning

other abusive behaviors that appear to threaten the stability, integrity or security of the TLD or any of its registrar partners and/or that may put the security of any Registrant or user at risk, including but not limited to: cybersquatting, sale and advertising of illegal or counterfeit goods, front-running, gripe sites, deceptive and⁄or offensive domain names, fake renewal notices, cross gTLD registration scams, traffic diversion, false affiliation, domain kiting⁄tasting, fast-flux, 419 scams.

If you want to set up a .makeup web site to criticize, say, L’Oreal for “body shaming” or for its animal testing policy, lots of luck to you.
The gTLD is owned by L’Oreal but seems to be being managed primarily by its application consultant, Fairwinds Partners.
It was originally designated as a single-registrant space, a so-called “closed generic” or “exclusive access” gTLD, in which only L’Oreal could register names.
But the company was forced to change its plans, under pain of losing its application, after the Governmental Advisory Committee persuaded ICANN to perform a U-turn on the permissibility of closed generics.
.makeup is due to start accepting pre-launch requests for Founders Program domains next Monday. General availability will start October 19.
Sunrise will kick off September 8, though L’Oreal warns that it has withheld generic terms such as “shop” from this period.
The company also owns .beauty, and I expect its terms there to be similar.