Monday, April 14, 2008

Naming a business

Today I and one of the software engineers in my company Usman (who posts at the tmmsoftware.blogspot, some serious technical stuff there, a must read for techies) went to a restaurant and passed a small book stall by the name of "goli kitab" ( bullet book). Seriously there are no two different things then a book and a bullet.. i could not see any connection.. It was the same as naming a baby "man eater" or "blood sucker". when i asked the owner of the stall of all names why did he name his book stall "goli" he gave me a long reply which included alot of mumbling but finally he stated that it seemed cool. This may sound layman but please when opening a new business dont keep names that have nothing to do with your business.. bullets and books just dont go together unless you only deal with books relating to bullets which is highly unlikely.. naming your business is a very essential step in setting up a successful business.. the name must emphasize some point.. it must have some meaning.. "Student Biryani" (biryani is a rice dish by the way very famous in sub continent) no doubt has tasty food but it also has a name which entices customers to come have food that would be relatively easy on the pockets because students are basically always broke..had they named their restaurant "bullet restaurant" i doubt many people would have gone there for the fear of getting served bullets.. The right name can make your company the talk of the town; the wrong one can send it to the gallows.. Remeber if the name communicates with the customer it makes your job easy because you wont have to explain yourself.

3 comments:

Khurram Ali said...

Nice, funny post! I agree. It seems that all successful businesses have good names. At the same time good companies also have strong branding which makes their brand look nice. I mean what did Google mean? With their strong branding, however, it has taken up a meaning.

Unknown said...

umair, you are great with words

Umair said...

google is one of the wonders of earth.. Some times if you offer excellent service or some thing unique it over rides weird names.