Commercial Connect LLC
 | |
| Type: | Privately held |
| Industry: | Internet Industry |
| Founded: | 2000 |
| Founder(s): | Jeffrey Smith |
| Headquarters: | 1418 S 3rd St. Louisville, KY 40208 |
| Country: | USA |
| Website: | www.dotshop.biz |
| LinkedIn: | Commercial Connect Llc. |
| Key People | |
| Jeffrey Smith, CEO Dr. Steven Locke, CIO | |
Commercial Connect is a technology company applying for the .shop new gTLD with ICANN. Its bid for the .shop TLD is supported by major retail associations and individual retailers like Macy's. The company claimed that there are already 30,000 .shop domain names pre-registered with BestRegistrar.com, which will be officially registered once the TLD becomes operational. Jeffrey Smith is the CEO of the company. [1] In December 2011, US National Retail Federation Foundation Director Richard Last joined Commercial Connect's board of directors[2]
Commercial Connect is one of 9 applicants for the .shop TLD, making .shop one of the most highly contested TLDs. However, Commercial Connect is one of only two companies that has applied for the TLD as a community applicant, this means that it will only be delegated to Commercial Connect if they are able to prove that their application has broad support from a clearly defined community. The other applicant that has applied through community priority evaluation, GMO Registry, also applied for the string as a non-community gTLD, in what seems to be a back-up plan if community status is denied, Commercial Connect did not do this and only applied as a community applicant - making its path to delegation and implementation more restricted and difficult.[3]
Partners
The company's bid for .shop new gTLD is supported by the following entities: [4]
- Macy's, Inc.
- Chase Securities
- Merrill Lynch
- Morgan Stanley
- Housing Capital Company
- Former Fed. Chair and Treasury Secretary G. William Miller
- U.S. Senator Richard G. Lugar (IN)
- Former U.S. Senator Birch Bayh (IN)