INTERVIEW CORE’s team: Martin Kuechenthal

“TLDs in other scripts than ASCII could gain additional benefit”, said Mr Kuechenthal

This week we will present you the newest member of CORE’s Executive Committee. He is ambitious, passionate, reliable, friendly, likes football, from Germany, a father , CEO of LEMARIT and what else see in the following interview:

.САЙТ and .ОНЛАЙН domains: Hi Martin, you have an interesting family name? Does it have a translation in English? From where is it origin?

Martin Kuechenthal: Hi, thanks for inviting me for this interview.
And thank you for finding my family name interesting, most people just find it complicated especially outside of Germany.
Actually the name “K?chenthal” or in ASCII “Kuechenthal” is a quite old German family name and as far as I know all people with this name are part of the same family tree. Directly translated it means “kitchen valley”, which is funny but does not make so much sense. One serious explanation for the origin means “to look down to the valley“, but I am not 100% sure.

.САЙТ and .ОНЛАЙН domains: What do you do for living?

Martin Kuechenthal: I am a co-founder and CEO of LEMARIT GmbH - Business Domain Management, located near Flensburg in the very north of Germany. We support internationally active organizations, mainly from the German speaking parts of Europe, in developing and protecting their brand name and product name assets on the Internet. I do this together with my brother Thomas who is a co-founder too and CIO of LEMARIT and of course a constantly growing team of specialists who support us and our clients. I am responsible for the Business Administration and Marketing within LEMARIT. Thomas is responsible for the technical part. So we have both our role in LEMARIT and this is doing very good since more than 12 years!

.САЙТ and .ОНЛАЙН domains: What brought you to CORE ExCom? What attracted you?

Martin Kuechenthal: Honestly the Council of Registrars has been fascinating my brother and me already since we started in the domain industry about 15 years ago. The idea of a non-for-profit organization which delivers services to its members really meets our way of thinking. And also the idea that different business models within the domain industry share resources to gain the best results for every member we like too!
After being a reseller for a couple of years LEMARIT decided to be a registrar on its own. We are accredited at a couple of registries like DENIC, EUrid, Nominet, etc. and are also ICANN accredited and since 2012 a CORE-member. We use CORE for a lot of ccTLDs also the (new) gTLDs… and as we have been involving, somebody asked if LEMARIT wants to join the ExCom this year.. and here I am. So finally we want to get involved in CORE and help to further develop so this was the natural way of doing it. And by the way also in CORE I share the work with my brother Thomas, he is always involved when it comes to very technical issues.

.САЙТ and .ОНЛАЙН domains: One of the newest projects of CORE is the Cyrillic domains “.САЙТ”/sait/ and “.ОНЛАЙН”/onlain/. What do you think of it in prospective? In your opinion, why would the people register such a domain?

Martin Kuechenthal: The new TLD program of ICANN has brought a wide range of new TLDs to the world. And honestly a lot of these nTLDs are from my perspective not of so much worth for the internet community, but especially TLDs in other scripts than ASCII could gain additional benefit. In my understanding this also was one of the main incitements of the program, unfortunately only a minority of the applications was not in ASCII.
So, for .САЙТ and .ОНЛАЙН I see a need in the Cyrillic writing countries, like Russia or Bulgaria, which have -over all counted- a huge market potential.
The people in these countries are after my knowledge and personal experience self-confident and proud of there languages and the Cyrillic letters and will therefore register Cyrillic domains for their purpose in their countries. Why should I register Martin.ONLINE when I was Bulgarian and could have Мартин.ОНЛАЙН?

.САЙТ and .ОНЛАЙН domains: When the working day ends what do you do usually?

Martin Kuechenthal: Usually I start between 7.30 and 8.00 in the morning and leaving at the same time in the evening… but fortunately I am traveling a lot and visiting conferences like the ICANN-Meetings all over the world so the working days (and nights) can vary a lot
Just got that I misunderstood your question: you can see that there is not that much time after work, but I love to share my time with family and friends and I love football and I am supporting FC Bayern M?nchen!

.САЙТ and .ОНЛАЙН domains: What do you wish to yourself, CORE and the Cyrillic Domains “.САЙТ” and “.ОНЛАЙН”?

Martin Kuechenthal: That is a big question, especially the first one But frankly, I wish that my family, friends and me keep well and fit and that LEMARITs business will prosper. The same I wish for CORE and I hope that we all set the right course for the future to gain a long lasting success. And I wish CORE and especially the people who work with CORE the best as we all only can succeed when you all do a great job also in future. And finally I wish that the TLDs .САЙТ and .ОНЛАЙН over time develop a sustainable and stable growth and will be used in the Cyrillic writing markets in lots of good and creative ways!