Swiss-based holding company Richemont, a luxury goods brand (expensive watches, jewelry, writing instruments and more), filed notice with ICANN to terminate its contract for a new generic top-level domain (gTLD), IWC. IWC is a dot-brand domain which the company planned to use to promote its exclusive watch brand of the same name.
This was not a surprise. Richemont was very active in the bidding phase in 2012, applying for a total of 14 dot-brand domains. By 2014 though, before signing contracts with ICANN, it withdrew its applications for .netaporter and .mrporter (the domains failed to attract other bidders). Last year, Richemont dropped two more brand TLDs − .montblanc and .chloe − that had been granted to it. In addition, Domain Incite reminds its readers that Richemont enjoys the rights to the new domain .watches. Granted to Richemont two and a half years ago, it is still unclear when registration of domain names will start within the domain and who will receive the right to register the names.
Evidently, Richemont is better at marketing luxury items than domain names, for which it has failed to find a use.
