What’s In A Name?
Naming a business is a lot like choosing a name for your baby. You want something meaningful, yet not too obscure and hard to spell, and not so common that it is unmemorable. Also, with naming a baby you may come up with a score of names before you find the right one.
Luckily, my husband, John and I had an easier time coming up with the best names for our sons than we did when we named our first gift shop. We opened in 1998 with the name, Triptych. Initially there were three partners going into the business and we thought we’d use a word that would describe some kind of trio. I thought that since triptych meant three art pieces that are hinged together that it would convey an image of something artistic but would not pin us down if we should want to change direction.
We were happy with our name choice even after the third part of the triptych bowed out of the business. We loved our little shop filled with Indonesian items that we imported ourselves, aromatherapy candles, and decorative ware. But in the ensuing years we found that our name was not fitting our needs. People asked us for the definition of triptych. Customers had trouble spelling or pronouncing our name. It wasn’t enough of a problem for us to say “we’ve got to change our name” but we knew something was askew. When a respected business consultant looked at my business card, saw my logo and said that my card didn’t say much about my business, the light bulb went off in my head. We had to make a change.
At our brainstorming sessions John and I thought about the feelings that our present shop conveyed to our customers and what their reactions were. Not a day went by when a customer would say that our shop had a good feeling, it smelled great, and was relaxing. Many times we heard the word Zen. Well, that was it. We would incorporate the word Zen into the equation. As we had many Far Eastern imports, it would not be a great leap for us to use the word Zen. Since we were a business to sell, we thought the word merchant would be included.
Hence, The Zen Merchant.
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January 23rd, 2006 @ 9:13 am
Naming your business does take a lot of thought, or I think it should. When developing my business I spent hours writing down words and feelings that portrayed what my producs were going to be and the mission of my company. Eventually I landed on The Wild Bon Bon and it felt like the right fit.