Cost $2 billion, money that could have been used for a domain upgrade — Father-son feud
This firm ought to spend less time fighting and more time on its domain name.
My parents taught me the Chinese saying “家丑不可外扬” (don’t wash your dirty linen in public) when I was growing up, so it is difficult to understand why the founder of a sizable firm would argue with his son in public.
WH Group is a Fortune China 100 firm. As stated by Bloomberg news on August 19, “A bitter family row between the chairman of WH Group Ltd. and his son over succession and management issues has wiped out more than $2 billion of market value in the world’s largest pork processor.”
$2 billion is a lot of money, and upgrading this firm’s corporate domain will cost much less and add more to their image as a prestigious brand.
WH Group is right now operating from WH-Group.com. Its Chinese brand is “萬洲國際” (Wan Zhou Guo Ji), so WH does not seem to be the acronym for the Chinese brand.
Based on the information, here are the domains that they may consider acquiring for upgrade or brand protection.
| Domain | Status |
|---|---|
| WHgroup .com | Parked |
| WH .com | In use |
| WanZhou .com | Not resolve |
| WHgroup .cn | In use |
| WH .cn | Not resolve |
| WanZhou .cn | In use |
As domain upgrades, both WHgroup .com and WH.com can be considered. The chance of acquiring the former is good as it is still parked but the latter is by now in use, so it won’t be easy to acquire. WanZhou .com is worth acquiring as it matches the firm’s Chinese brand and uses the popular 2-pin format. (“Guo Ji” means “global” which is generic enough to be removed from the brand.)
Finally, I’m surprised that WH Group and many sizable Chinese firms don’t own their brand-matching .cn domains. This is short-sighted. There are two reasons the .cn domains ought to be secured: (1) brand protection to prevent a third party from using the domain for malicious purposes, and (2) as a backup to the .com domain.
