Can you remember this 5N corporate domain of a top firm?
Probably not.
Shi Ji Kai Yuan (世纪开元) was founded in 2001 as a platform to offer one-stop printing solutions. The firm claims to have 20 million regular users on its website. It features a variety of services based on the consumer-to-business (C2B), consumer-to-machine (C2M), and supplier-to-business-consumer (S2B2C) models. Shi Ji Kai Yuan ranks No. 98 of the Top 100 internet firms (2020) in China.
When I was researching this firm, I naturally thought that its corporate domain would be the brand-matching ShiJiKaiYuan.com, acronym domain SJKY .com, or their equivalents in the .cn extension. No, these domains are either not active or still available for sale. Shi Ji Kai Yuan can be found at 36588.com.
Can you remember 36588.com easily? For Chinese, it is no problem. As far as I can see, the domain consists of two numbers: 365 and 88. The number 365 refers to the 365 days in a year, which basically means “everyday”. 8 means “making a fortune” and 88 just repeats it twice, which is quite common in the Chinese culture. Together, they mean “making a fortune everyday”.
I see two issues here. The first one is that 36588 does not suggest anything related to printing. I even thought it was a gambling site. Also, I wonder how non-Chinese clients can remember this domain when one day the firm decides to go global. One solution that many Chinese firms take is the use of their matching acronym domain – SJKY.com in this case.
In my opinion, 5N or longer numeric domains are not suitable for application in corporate China, so I do not expect their widespread use. These domains are mostly traded among investors. Another point is that long domains are difficult to remember, which offers an opportunity for an upgrade to an acronym domain. If your domain happens to be the acronym of a Chinese firm name – as in the case of SJKY.com – your domain may be very valuable since of its upgrade possibility.
