What if I tell you that finding a great name for your Fashion Brand or Business doesn’t have to be difficult?
It sounds great right?
All you need to do is to keep reading because in this article I will teach you 10 amazing tips on how to find a great name for your fashion brand right now.
How important is your Brand Name?
It depends on the nature of your business.
Is your business a B2B (business-to-business) or a B2C (business-to-consumer)?
If you have a fashion brand you are of course a B2C business and you brand name is very important.
Why?
B2C businesses depend on advertising, virality, and social discovery for customer acquisition.
All of these acquisition methods are supercharged by a company name that can be easily communicated, remembered, and liked.
Conversely, many B2B businesses are grown only via existing partners and connections who couldn’t care less about the company’s name.
You can change the name of the company after you have launched but changing the brand name is not a good idea.
Here’s why:
Changing the name of your brand after you have some costumers and brand recognition will make you loose a lot of your existing costumers.
Make sure you Get it right from the beginning.
In case you are wondering what’s the difference between the company name and the brand name let me give you an easy example:
Zara for instance belongs to Inditex, so the brand name is Zara and company name is Inditex, easy breezy.
Ok, Ready for my 10 tips to find a great name for your fashion brand?
Let’s go:
Tip #1 – Don’t Choose your Own Name, unless….
There are a lot of fashion brands out there whose name is the name of the fashion designer him/herself.
That’s an easy option to go for and a cool one.
However…If you are starting your first fashion brand you will make a lot of mistakes.
Hopefully your first fashion venture will be successful but things can go wrong and you might not make it.
If you choose your own name and you fail, it will not be easy to start a new brand again with your name.
Like for everything in life there are exceptions, if you already have a successful brand then maybe your second brand can be your own name.
It depends on your prior experience as well.
Let’s take the example of Tom Ford.
It would not make any sense for a fashion genius like him to start his own fashion brand and call it something else rather than his own name.
He’s got the experience in big and difficult houses as Gucci and YSL and he’s famous already, he had to use his own name.
If you have worked for an important house for a considerable amount of time you can risk using your name for your first fashion brand.
Otherwise, I would advise not to.
Tip #2. Try to choose a Name that means something to you
This tip is highly personal. It might even sound strange to you.
Let me explain:
Try to think about a name that intimately relates to you.
Maybe a mix of names of people you love.
Perhaps the city or town where you fell in love by your wife or husband, something in nature that you love, a hobby you love.
You get the point.
I think it can give you an extra boost to work harder and never feel demotivated when bad times arrive.
Using your own name would be a perfect example for this but as mentioned above be careful with that option.
Tip #3 – Get into Brainstorming Mode
When you are brainstorming names I recommend using a thesaurus and a translator.
Let’s say for example, you want to create an eco-friendly shoes brand.
You could look up for synonyms for “nature” or for “organic” and maybe mix it with the word shoes.
Or for instance you could check how to say the word shoes or nature in another language.
A thesaurus and a translator can be of great help when you are in brainstorming mode
Adding suffixes or prefixes, creating compound words, adding numbers or misspelling words are powerful tactics that will hopefully help you finding a great brand name
The online thesaurus and translators I recommend are:
Tip #4 – Try some Great Free Online Name Generation Tools
There are some good free tools on the net to help you finding a name, the ones I recommend are:
Brainstorm a list of words that you have in mind to use.
Introduce them there and you get some nice suggestions of names.
Tip #5 – Still stuck? Try namestation.com
As the company’s CEO you should really do your best to come up with a good name yourself rather than just paying some branding agency for a name.
Besides being expensive, nobody like you, the brand’s creator to come up with a name that reflects your mission and vision.
However,
If you can’t come up with something for free give this paid yet cheap tool a try:
The way it works with namestation is like this:
You run a name contest, you explain your concept and users will start suggesting names, the user that suggested the name you wanted will get paid for it.
Brilliant, right?
Tip #6 – Ask for feedback
Probably more important than you liking your brand’s name is that a people do as well or at least they understand it.
Your name should be easy to spell and to understand not only for you but for everybody.
Call your friends and family.
Ask them to spell it and to repeat it.
If they can’t do it rather easily, I’m sorry but it is time for you to get back into brainstorm mode.
You have to have a name that can be spoken and written without confusion.
It’s not fun to have to clarify your name constantly.
Hopefully you will have to say it a lot of times.
Tip #7 – Make it Easy to Find
Is there already a lot of competition for anything close to your branding idea?
Do a quick Google search.
Do the same with social (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc) or any other websites where you think your target audience might hang out.
If there are a lot of relevant results with a very similar name to yours it would be wise to move on and find something more unique.
Why?
It will take you more time to rank high on google.
Also on social media people might be looking for you and might end up visiting pages of companies who have a very similar name to yours.
Tip #8 – Do your Copyright/Trademark Homework
Alright, You have brainstormed for a while.
You got good feedback and you have got a few names that you love.
Time to do your legal research.
Using a name that can possibly infringe a trademark can simply kill your business. look at this crazy example.
Make sure you can use the name you want for a fashion category.
Your name might have a trademark in some other industry but it is crucial nobody is using it yet in clothing.
Use trademarkia.com for a quick trademark search on the name you want.
If there’s some registered trademark with the name you want do some further research to see if they are still valid.
In last case scenario try to talk to a lawyer to get some professional help.
Tip #9 – Don’t Get Obsessed with a yourbrandname.com Domain
Now that you have done your legal and competition research it is time to find a great domain and create social media profiles.
Getting a .com domain nowadays is tough and many people limit themselves with the domain name.
That’s a big mistake.
Here’s the thing:
The name itself matters much more than having a .com domain.
So what about if your favourite name doesn’t have a .com name?
No problem!
You can either go for a national domain, let’s say .co.uk if you are selling in the UK or go for other international domains .co or .net.
Something you can do as well is adding fashion related words to your name, for instance you can add wear, design, shoes, fashion, clothing and get the .com domain.
The same for social media, if your name is taken do the same as above.
If you see the user is not active, file a trademark application that you should do anyway sooner or later, get in contact with the social media companies claiming that username, once you get it you can then change your username.
This is not super easy but could be done.
How can you do a quick domain search?
A great tool I love is called: DOMAINR
Domainr.com gives you all the related results to the name you inserted.
To search for social media names have a look at this great tool:
Tip #10 – Register the Domain, Create Social Media Profiles and Work your ass off!
Register that freaking amazing name name everywhere.
Have a glass of wine to celebrate 🙂
Now that you have a name, you can focus on the real hard work of building an awesome fashion brand!
In conclusion:
Finding a great name is a tough but fun process.
A brand name is always very subjective and it is far from being a deciding factor if you going to make it or not.
For example:
Is Uniqlo a good name? What about Hollister? Cheap Monday? Forever 21?
I guess some people love them and others hate them.
I am personally not a big fan of these names myself.
The quality and design of your products is 100x more important than your name, that’s for sure.
My last and final two tips are:
Find a name that:
1 – You love to pronounce all the time
2 – People can also pronounce and spell easily
This is it guys, I hope it was helpful to you.