Tucows 2013 Annual Report Download - page 7

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impact on advertisement-based revenue. These seasonal effects could cause fluctuations in our financial results as well as the
content site’s performance statistics reported and measured by leading Internet audience measurement services such as
comScore.
Competition
Our competition may be divided into the following groups:
•
Retail-oriented domain registrars, such as GoDaddy and Web.com through its acquisition of Network Solutions and
Register.com, who compete with our Resellers and our own retail operations for end-users.
•
Wholesale-oriented domain registrars, such as Demand Media through its acquisition of eNom, Wild West Domains
(a division of GoDaddy) and Melbourne IT, who market services to resellers such as our customers.
•
Wholesale Email Service providers, such as Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft, Bluetie and MailTrust.
•
Ad-supported content providers, such as CNET’s Download.com.
We expect to continue to experience significant competition from the competitors identified above and, as our
business continues to develop, we expect to encounter competition from other providers of Internet services. Service
providers, Internet portals, web hosting companies, email hosting companies, outsourced application companies, country
code registries and major telecommunication firms may broaden their services to include services we offer.
We believe the primary competitive factors in our Reseller Services are:
•
Providing superior customer service by anticipating the technical requirements and business objectives of resellers
and providing them with technical advice to help them understand how our services can be customized to meet their
particular needs.
•
Providing cost savings over in-house solutions by relieving resellers of the expense of acquiring and maintaining
hardware and software and the associated administrative burden.
•
Enabling resellers to better manage their relationships with their end-users.
•
Facilitating scalability through an infrastructure designed to support millions of transactions across millions of end-
users.
•
Providing superior technology and infrastructure, consisting of industry-leading software and hardware that allow
resellers to provide these services to their customers without having to make substantial investments in their own
software or hardware.
Although we encounter pricing pressure in many markets in which we compete, we believe the effects of that
pressure are mitigated by the fact that we deliver a high degree of value to our resellers through our business and technical
practices. We believe our status as a trusted supplier also allows us to mitigate the effects of this type of competition. We
believe that the long-term relationships we have made with many resellers results in a sense of certainty that would not be
available to those resellers through a competitor.
4
Employees
As of December 31, 2013, we had approximately 200 full-time employees. None of our employees are currently
represented by a labor union. We consider our relations with our employees to be good.
Corporate Information
We were incorporated under the laws of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in November 1992 under the name
Infonautics, Inc. In August 2001, we completed our acquisition of Tucows Inc., a Delaware corporation, and we changed our
name from Infonautics, Inc. to Tucows Inc. Our principal executive offices are located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada and we
have offices in Germany, the Netherlands and the United States of America.