Open Shop Project: The Name of the Game

Last week I wrote a post about our new task here in the Spreadshirt marketing department – The Open Shop Project. The marketing team here at Spreadshirt is working together to set up our very own Spreadshirt shop.

Step 1 – the Name

We spent quite some time trying to decide what to name our shop. The one parameter we have is that all of our products were going to have text designs; just words. So that should help to narrow down the name, right? Wrong. Selecting a name was much more complicated than it first seemed. The name of your shop is a big thing that can set the course for years to come.
Here are some things to think about when choosing a name

1. Is someone else using the name? Is the domain name available?
   A quick search on Google and GoDaddy.com can answer this question. We came up with a bunch of names that we liked but some of them already existed as shops or some of the names we liked did not have the .com available. We decided we wanted a name where the .com is available. If the domain name isn’t available you could try adding a word. For example, if WashableWisdom.com was not available we could have tried ShopWashableWisdom.com.
2. What does the name say about the shop? Is the name too narrow?
   Since we will be selling many t-shirts, we started with some shop names that included the word t-shirt. We wanted to convey that we are selling t-shirts but, once we realized that we wanted to sell sweatshirts, aprons and other items, we decided to take the word t-shirt out of the name. We didn’t want to limit our shop by the name. The name “Washable Wisdom” gives us room to expand in the future.
3. The Theme
   Okay, so I know this seems to contradict what I just wrote, but it is important to at least think about the theme of your shop. This is exactly what happened to us and we spent some time this morning revisiting the theme of our shop. We started with the parameter of text only designs. Now that we have the name Washable Wisdom, we have decided to make sure that our designs all share the common theme of wisdom. We even spent some time talking about what is our definition of wisdom (I will save that for another post).
4. Easy to Say, Easy to Spell
   Is your shop name easy to pronounce? Is it easy to spell? If people can’t spell your business name, they are going to have an even harder time finding your business. I learned this one the hard way. My first online business was a t-shirt shop that was named ThreeStitch.com. Every time I told someone to just visit ThreeStich.com they could never find the site because they thought I was saying TreeStitch.com. ThreeStitch was way too complicated to be a good name for an online business.
5. Does it make sense?
   This whole conversation got us thinking about what are some business names that just don’t work. I decided to Google “Bad Business Names” and found some even funnier stuff. Apparently many people don’t like the name “Dress Barn” – click here to read the blog post on bad business names.
   So before you finalize your shop name, it is probably a good idea to get some feedback - ask some friends what they think of the name.

Do you have any tips for selecting a name for your shop? Is there a good story behind the name of your shop? We would love to hear how you choose a name for your shop.