Phoebe: Creating the Name that becomes the Brand

Hi everyone!

I’ve decided on fashion tees and accessories for men and women. After some time I would then eventually expand out to kid’s tees. Now that I know what products and industry in and target market I’m interested it becomes a lot easier to think of the name and branding ideas. I myself like things that are a bit strange, a bit left field but are still socially acceptable. As mentioned I liked cute monsters, interesting quotes from movies and songs and toys to put next to your computer baby animals and nature. This is a perfect starting point – listing random things that I enjoy or would have a laugh at.

Although a lot of people may think that fashion and caring about what you wear or not wear in some cases, I really beg to differ. I believe what you wear affects your state of mind or personality. Notice how I said affects – not reflects, though sometimes I think it’s actually both. So if you wear a colour that’s fun or a print that’s interesting, it almost becomes a part of you when you wear it – an extension of your personality if you will. Now I won’t get all hocus pocus, fashion forward, try hard on you but this is relevant to what I would like to design. What would I want to products to stand for and where do I want them housed?

I remember seeing Kookai for the first time. When I walked in the store I felt a rush of awe, because yes – it was that beautiful. The floral wallpaper, streams of light peeping through white tassles descending on the racks of beautiful dresses with a circle centre piece where the lush carpet was – sort of like an island with the tree leaves hanging down. (Someone bring me a mocktail!) So I would love for my store to reflect this sort of personality. I would love for the brand to be as powerful as this. Ambitious I know, but this is the aim part of the experiment! J

I think starting off the brand personality is much easier to think of a name that condenses all the ideas of what you’d like to stand for.

Keywords:

Fun, cute, a little bit different, my favourite, colourful, feminine, soft, pop culture, sweet, black, cartoons, old school, meaningful, going out, beach, holidays, soft cotton, strong prints, forest, animals, organic, superheroes, light, space and maybe characters that are recognisable.

So names… what are some words that spark an emotion? Strange – but not too strange! Quirky without being too ugly?
Let’s see…I think I like these words:

Cute. Cool. Weird. Funny. Quirky. Lufu (means love in Latin). Bebop. Monster. Magic. LightSpaceTees. 

Mixing them together – WeirdButCoolThings (quite long?) MonsterMagic. (nah too much like Monkey Magic – I’ll get teased to no end). Bebop. Acid Tees (inspired by Acid Jazz). MonsterTees (taken- just looked), Lufu (also a nearly extinct Nigerian language),

* It’s a good idea to look up the name either on www.name.com.au, www.godaddy.com, www.domainsbot.com, while you’re thinking of names to save time and disappointment! Sometimes with registering for a name you’ll need to have your ABN with you. You can apply for an ABN (Australian Business Number) here. From memory it doesn’t take long… a day or so where you fill out an online form and then they send it to you in the form of a letter after it’s been approved. Sometimes it gets lost (speaking from experience) so best to apply and then call them afterwards to see if it’s pending, so you don’t waste your time and effort. For GoDaddy you don’t need an ABN but you’ll need to provide your details like address etc and with Name you need an ABN.

I like the idea of space – the stars and the moon but want to be a bit different. The word Luna is nice, because it’s feminine and means Moon Goddess which is pretty and is quite short. I’ll have a look on one of the domain websites and see if it’s available.

30 seconds later…

Luna.com, LunaLove.com, LovelyLuna.com are taken… I’ll try inLovewithLuna.com… Yay! It’s available! Perfect!

Coming up next… Signing up as an affiliate by going to DecoNetwork’s site and then develop the prints and branding!

Kristi: choosing an online store provider

Choosing an online store provider is a really relevant point. In my previous job I was a web designer for a Design and Marketing agency. We were asked to create an online store for a custom embroidery and workwear/uniforms company. Man was that a tall order!

Firstly the amount of time and research required to build a suitable solution from scratch is really not justifiable or in the scope of a small -medium size company’s budget. We had to figure out all the logic, understand the garment industry and the complex pricing of light colours, dark colours, embroidery cost per stitch…. Not to mention having to organise a photo shoot of all the garments and creating thumbnails for them all!

I think we did a satisfactory job but it was a hefty sum we charged ($10-15k from memory) and very time-consuming for one web designer and one web developer with a limited time frame.

So when I heard about DecoNetwork.com I was totally sold. The guys have spent years on research and development, optimizing the system specifically for custom goods and apparel. The online designer is a huge factor too, allowing customers to self serve and mix and match designs on different garments. They also include heaps of popular products already built in with different views, color, size and pricing information- gold.

So basically, instead of trying to put something together from scratch you can get started immediately. As we know, Web 2.0 is about being a “platform for platforms” –  if you want to build an online t-shirt store, you should consider as your platform, not the web itself, but a platform built on the web.

Something important to note is the DecoNetwork subscription is for people who actually print or embroider the goods themselves. A feature of DecoNetwork is the Affiliate stores – basically people like me sign up for Affiliate stores under a DecoNetwork Fulfullment center.

Someone asked me – why dont you use Cafe press? Well the benefit of choosing a DecoNetwork Affiliate store is that it’s local and personal – not a US corporation. The DecoNetwork fulfillment guys I have chosen are the same city as me, so my customers wont have to wait to get something shipped from the US. I can call the guys anytime and ask for specific products or to add my own swing tag, whatever.

Because my online store will be driven by my own social networks it makes sense to be local and help support small businesses in Australia. Plus I’m not competing with 1000s of other designers in the same space but instead be niche market focused.

Anyway that was a long one (again). Hopefully it made sense. Let me know if not.

Anh: Choosing the name for your online store

Greetings,

I have now signed up my online store.

I went through a series of days and a number names for my store / domain name.

To help you get started too, here are some tips for registering a name or domain name for your online store.

Tips for choosing a domain name

1. Brain storm a number of keywords for your domain name… say 5-10 keywords. This will also helps with your phrases and tag line. From the list, you can come up with a good name by shortening a keyword or combing certain keywords together to form an unique name.
2. Keep the name short, easy to type and easy to remember. I read somewhere that some registrars allow you to register a domain name with up to 63 or 67 characters.
3. Consider the domain extensions – .com, .net, .info, .biz etc… I would recommend a .com domain name… Also to consider your local market, if need, have a country associated domain name.
4. Domain names are not case sensitive, use only letters, numbers and dashes. Spaces and symbols are not allowed.
5. When you do a domain name search and the name you want is taken, you can add plurals to your domain name like “My and “The” or even make use of hyphens in your domain name. Hyphenated names is good for search engine and thus will return your site more prominently in search results. I would personally avoid this if possible but depends on the situation, it may be the best thing to do.

The name that I have chosen for my online store is called “Stickkers”
When I signed up and started setting up my store, I chose a temporarily name (from Wilcom DecoNetwork) and with my registered domain name, I updated the CNAME  and DNS record to point to my Wilcom DecoNetwork store. You can check out http://www.stickkers.com  - Fresh and new – this is as core as it gets (nothing been done to it).

A personal tip about registering your domain name, I would recommend Godaddy. It is reliable, has great customer service, prices are cheap. Godaddy have ongoing specials (via email and on the website) – so it is even cheaper… If there are no special promos at your time of purchase (a good little trick is), add it to your cart and leave it for a day or so. Godaddy will send you an email advising that you still have some items left in your shopping cart, so to entice you, they will offer a 10% discount if you make your purchase(within a time period of course).

Not to forget to mention, when you register your domain name with godaddy, it will also allows you to check if that name is available on twitter too. Social sites is a big thing and I am looking forward to exploring and use it for this experiment.

This weekend I will be setting up my store.

Till then, bye for now!
Anh