Business Name – 3 Tips from the Shed

What’s in a Business Name?

Finding your perfect business name is a lot of fun, but it can also be frustrating. Here’s how we named our consultancy company “The Change Shed”.

We spent a lot of time thinking about our business name. Looking for options. Checking the URLs. Checking Companies House for similar business names. Deliberating over .co.uk or .com. Making long lists and shortening them. Asking people what they thought. Checking the words don’t mean something rude in another language. Thinking how our brand would be perceived and so on…

Naming a new business is not easy and can be frustrating because just when you think you found a great name, you find that some clever “so and so” probably parked the URL you really want about 15 years ago! However, using a few creative techniques and useful software can really help. These are our top 3 tips.

1. We found that for checking URLs, it is useful to use a domain name analyzer. You can set up projects with lots of different variants of possible domain names and check out the available top level domains (e.g. .biz; .com or .co.uk).
2. When you’ve settled on something, it is worth checking the history of that name. Google possible variations and have a look at archive.org/web/ to see of someone had your URL before and it had a dark history.
3. Use creative strategies such as putting together word elements that represent your service. Apparently, global systems integrator Accenture created their name by combining “accent” with “future”. I’m not sure how true that is, but the strategy can work.

If all else fails then how about looking at the street names around you? A good friend of mine works in Hong Kong where there are some fantastic street names, his business name derived from the street of his favourite restaurant!

Why we Chose The Change Shed for our Business Name

Calling our business The Change SHED was a deliberate move. Yes, sheds are often earthy, basic sorts of places, but they are also places of creativity, of growth and invention. We wanted our shed to be a place to go when you need help changing and growing your business, developing your strategy, making innovation happen. Sheds are not over-complicated places. Sheds are not arrogant. That’s how we want to work. That’s why we picked our business name.

Our Goals for The Change Shed

Over time it is our goal to build up a community of people who are interested in culture, change, growth and innovation. So, we will be adding tools to The Change Shed that anyone can borrow. We will be encouraging people to plant their ideas and see what grows. We will be sharing tips. And hopefully, The Change Shed can become a useful place for you to check out from time to time.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on what we should include in our shed (on business change, growth, innovation, strategy) and whether you have any interesting stories about the journey you took in coming up with your own business name.