What makes a good, marketing-friendly biz name?
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I'm having trouble choosing a catchy name for my very small, out-of home sewing business. My nick name is Aunt Saucey. I hava a few ideas but hoping you could help: SEW SPECIAL, SAUCEY'S SEW SPECIAL, SEW SAUCEY.
As for ideas for your new business name, I can offer a couple of tips that should help you out a bit on what to think about when choosing your business name.
First you should check out Pandecta Magazine (http://www.pandecta.com), this will give you a very good comprehensive idea of how to choose a great business name. They have an e-book you can download too that actually has business names that you can either use, (in which case make sure it's available in your state and not trademarked like "Sew Special" might be) or at least have a bunch of names that can help your creative juices get going.
There are a lot of things to consider when choosing a business name. For one, you have to be comfortable with it for a long time. So make sure whatever you settle on doesn't get stale over time, and you can continually be happy saying, "Hi, I'm Saucey with XYZ company" and this is what I do.
A lot of people go too trendy and then realize too late that their baby became an old man too quickly before anyone really got to know him, like him and trust him--in a branding sense.
Make sure you have a few friends that will be brutally honest with you on what you think of choosing, and if they're nice about it, they're really not helping.
Ultimately you want something everyone will identify with and enjoy saying over and over so your word-of-mouth advertising will go along smoothly and your branding won't be hard to get out to the public.