.clinique Domain

18a
Describe the mission/purpose of your proposed gTLD

Applicant is part of The Estée Lauder Companies Inc. ("Estee Lauder"), one of the worldʹs leading manufacturers and marketers of quality skin care, makeup, fragrance and hair care products. Estée Lauder is publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: EL)
The Companyʹs products are sold in over 150 countries and territories under the following brand names: Estée Lauder, Aramis, Clinique, Prescriptives, Lab Series, Origins, M-A-C, Bobbi Brown, Tommy Hilfiger, Kiton, La Mer, Donna Karan, Aveda, Jo Malone, Bumble and bumble, Darphin, Michael Kors, American Beauty, Flirt!, GoodSkin Labs, Grassroots Research Labs, Tom Ford, Coach, Ojon, Smashbox and Ermenegildo Zegna.
Estée Lauder sells products principally through limited distribution channels to complement the images associated with our brands. These channels include more than 30,000 points of sale in over 135 countries and territories and include upscale department stores, Estee Lauder websites and authorized retailer websites, specialty retailers, upscale perfumeries and pharmacies and prestige salons and spas.
Fiscal 2011 was an outstanding year for Estee Lauder. We made excellent progress against our strategic objectives, profitably grew many of our brands and product categories and achieved strong sales gains. We continued to reduce operational costs and successfully rolled out new phases of our Strategic
Modernization Initiative. As a result of our combined activities, many of our financial metrics again reached all-time highs. In Fiscal 2011, Estee Lauder achieved many milestones including record net sales of $8.8 billion.
E-commerce is not only one of the fastest-growing channels globally, but it is also one of the most complex. This new digital world of e-commerce, digital marketing and social networking is becoming a key source of competitive advantage, fundamentally changing how consumers perceive, select, try and purchase beauty products. Just as there is an increased opportunity for brands to use the digital world as a platform for building brand equity and awareness, there is also a greater expectation from consumers for brands to communicate with them transparently, authentically and in real time. In response to these new conditions, we evolved our e-commerce strategy to encompass e-commerce, m-commerce, digital marketing and social media as part of a multidimensional, full-picture digital strategy.

As part of Estee Lauder's strategic initiative, we continue to enhance our digital capabilities to take advantage of this increasingly important communications area. One of the ways we did this was by leveraging game-changing technologies, such as mobile applications and social media platforms, to allow our brands to connect with consumers in new and interactive ways. Since the digital universe is fundamentally changing how consumers research and buy beauty products, we will continue investing in ways to evolve our digital capabilities. As we move forward we look for ways to enhance our digital presence. By investing resources in the creation of a TLD for the proposed .clinique we hope to create the opportunity for a new and exciting platform for our consumers. This will increase our already extremely significant presence in the digital world. In 2009, Estee Lauder has over 41 million visitors to its various e-commerce sites. In 2010, it had more than 96.5 million visitors and in 2011, that number reached well over 125 million visitors.
The proposed .clinique gTLD is a restricted, exclusively-controlled TLD that would potentially serve the purpose of enhancing and expanding Estée Lauder's ability to:
• Facilitate the achievement of Estée Lauder to develop, manufacture, market and sell the world's best cosmetics, skin care, makeup, fragrance and hair care products;
• create a connected digital presence and personalized brand experience for customers, prospects, employees, joint ventures, business partners and communities where we do business;
• deliver product and service marketing/advertising;
• enable marketing/technology campaign activation;
• facilitate secure interaction and communication with individuals and entities with whom Estée Lauder has a business relationship;
• improve business operations;
• simplify Internet user navigation to information about Estée Lauder products and services;
• demonstrate market leadership in protecting customer/member privacy and confidential information online; and
• meet future customer expectations and competitive market demands by continuing to develop & deploy leading edge products and services.×