This is a tradeshow update, but it’s not THE tradeshow update from Domain Fest that I plan to post tomorrow. My parents are in town for the New York International Gift Fair, which takes place a couple of times a year at the Javitz Center. How does this relate to domain names?

This afternoon while walking around the massive Javitz Center floor, I found a number of companies that sold unique dog-related products. I mentioned my Dog Walker website, and all of them said they would drop ship products for me. In addition, they could send me catalog quality photographs of their products to display on my website, and all but one would be willing to give me an opening order break (most companies require a large opening order to open an account).

Selling product (without touching it) is one other way to drive revenue, as I can sell dog bags, collars, leashes, and other things that dog walkers and owners would want. I will need to find an easy to implement e-commerce solution or contact one of the companies to see if they are able to assist with the shopping cart functionality. If that is expensive or time consuming to set-up, the incremental revenue probably wouldn’t be worth the effort.

Right now, I am looking through the show’s huge catalog, filled with a couple hundred pages of information. To me, the most valuable bit of information is contained on the category listing pages.  There are hundreds of different categories of product lines listed, and I am using this list to search for potentially valuable .com category domain names.

Although most of the categories listed (like soap and bath) are well-known, the list is a way to get fresh domain ideas. It’s also a way to see how many companies have products in these categories. If you own a category-type domain name, I recommend that you try to go to one of the industry tradeshows where you can network with people in that industry or vertical. It’s a way to learn about the industry, meet contacts, and maybe even sell a domain name.

Many companies defensively purchase typos and alternative extensions to prevent others from owning them. Defensive domain name registrations aren’t simply for brand protection though. They can also be done to ensure a company prevents another similar company from entering a newly created industry or niche using the type of product as the company’s brand or website.

I spent a couple of hours at the New York International Gift Fair today, and among the hundreds of exhibitors, I saw a company that had a new type of product. This unique gift item may or not be a hit, but it certainly is a one of a kind product that can and will be knocked off by others. The .com of the product type is currently sitting unregistered, available for anyone to register for under $10.

While this product is not similar to door knockers, I will use  door knockers as an example. A few years ago, I saw a guy selling unique metal door knockers at the show. I forgot what they guy’s company was called, but when I was looking it up a few months ago for a friend, I was curious to find out who owned DoorKnockers.com. You probably guessed it… the guy who I saw at the show owns it. Smart guy.

Now back to this new product. I left the show intrigued about the product, but we weren’t convinced to buy it (for my parents’ business). We stopped by dozens of booths, so they are all blending together right now.  I Googled it, but the problem is the guy took a very common utilitarian product (hundreds of thousands of Google results), and he made it completely unique. Because of this, I can’t find his company when searching for the term.

I get that many companies want to have a unique brand rather than a generic industry term for the company name, but even if he simply registered this product .com name, he could at least prevent others from knocking his product off and owning the space online.

The takeaway here is that if you develop your own special type of product and the .com is available, register it. Even if you don’t want to set up a website, at least you can forward that to your brand’s website and prevent someone else from buying it.