Choosing a name for your business is often one of the most difficult decisions a new firm can imagine. What can I call myself? If I work under my name, how will anyone know what I am offering? If I call myself my name plus a word to describe my work, what if I want to diversify or add more services to the name?
What does everyone else call themselves? Should I use a pleasant sounding name that makes me look friendly and approachable, or will the name make me sound silly, flippant or amateurish? Shall I take professional advice? How much will that cost me?
Can I copyright and protect my name? What if someone else claims that they had the name first? Can they prevent me from using my chosen name at a later date?
What font or colour scheme should I opt for? Should I invent a logo, or use one of the many different ‘free to use’ logos available on the Internet, and add my name to it? Should I choose something that looks gardenesque? A spade handle with green shoots growing out of it? Or a rose motif with a quill pen for the stem, showing that I am a green fingered garden designer?
Choice of Name
Obviously, your personal choice will be something that you are happy to be associated with. Something that you are confident and comfortable with. A name you feel really encapsulates and describes you and your services in a pleasant way. A name you can easily recite over the telephone when answering incoming calls. Tongue Twisters are not useful when trying to appear bright and alert when answering a call!
You need to feel comfortable with your choice for many reasons. It is very difficult when you start out to feel that your name belongs to YOU. It is your firm, your name, your public image, and anything remotely embarrassing should be avoided.
Try to imagine how your company or practice name sounds to a potential customer. Does if really sound like a name they will be happy to repeat to their friends and neighbours when they explain who it is they have chosen to carry out work in their garden.
If you decide to use your name, do you call yourself Alan Sargent, or A. Sargent. Alan Sargent Gardens, or Alan Sargent Garden Designer. Should it be ‘Designers’, to make the firm sound larger? Or ‘Designer’ to make the firm sound small and friendly. All of these factors come into play when trying to decide.
Alan Sargent Landscapes, or Sargent Landscapes? Landscapes By Alan Sargent? Sounds a little pretentious perhaps? Alan Sargent – Landscapes of Distinction. Does that sound positive? Or pompous?
Try out several variations on the theme, and ask family and friends to help you with your choice. Try not to pigeon-hole yourself, unless it is for a positive reason. I know of companies that call themselves by their service offer. ‘Lawns & Hedges’. ‘Mow and Go’. ‘Rock and Water’. ‘Block and Slab’ . You would not contact any of these firms for services other than their nominated skills offer. This is great, if all they want to do is to remain within their chosen field. But if you want the business to expand and grow into new pastures, by adding fresh offerings to your client base, it is perhaps not a good idea to publicly limit your offer.
The use of initials can be acceptable, if the rest of the name is obvious. There are of course, exceptions to this rule. You have only to look at B & Q, M & S, P & O and others to see that initials can be used successfully, but these are well known brand names, with a massive publicity machine behind them. A.S Gardens, A.S Landscapes, A.S Garden Maintenance does not have quite the same ring as the more famous names. Indeed, I would aver it sounds as though I have been too lazy or lacking in imagination to come up with a better name!
Often, the same ‘set’ of letters are used by more than one company, but if they are different types of business, it does not matter. SCATS = Southern Counties Agricultural Trading Society, and also Southern Counties Air Taxi Service. PGCA = Professional Garden Consultants Association and Professional Golf Club Association. No problem with sharing initials in these cases!
Thinking Ahead
Many years ago, I used to run as Alan Sargent Landscapes, with a strap line underneath stating ‘Town and Country Gardens of Distinction’ from around the mid 70s until the mid 80s, when I became fed up with people wanting free advice, free site visits, free this and free that. It is all very well providing potential clients with helpful advice, but there comes a time to say No!
I chose to operate thereafter as Alan Sargent, and split Town And Country Gardens away from the company as a trading title. Everything else remained the same. Same bank account, same insurances etc, but now with two persona. Alan Sargent is now charging for his time and advice. Town and Country Gardens now build gardens. By separating the two, I earned far more money for my time, without losing any revenue from the Landscape side.
By doing so, something unexpected happened……..Town and Country Gardens took on a life of its’ own as a Trading title. I built many gardens as Chelsea and other RHS Shows under the banner of Town and Country Gardens, whilst developing Alan Sargent into a consultancy business. In 1995, I was approached by a Company who wanted to upgrade their public image by changing their landscape business and buying the name of Town and Country Gardens.
I sold the name and logo to the new owners, and continued operating my consultancy business without any loss or detriment to myself or connections. So it does pay to look to the future. If your business name is desirable, one day you may find yourself on the receiving end of a business sale transaction! (I could never have sold the company as Alan Sargent Landscapes, as I was not for sale! In any event, without the main person being part of the sale, it would have no value)
Public Image
If you are running a garden design practice, it may seem a good idea to use a flower or plant name to call your company. There is no reason for not doing so, but how many other practices are using the same flower? What image does that flower conjure up? Rose for Cottage gardens? Yucca for Modern Town gardens? Petunia for Soft and Fluffy gardens? Or Poppy to Wildflower Meadow gardens?
By careful choice of plant names, you can indeed, conjure up the style of design that you specialise in, so in some cases, it may be very useful.
There are many other company names that appear across the country. Indeed, there are several Town and Country Gardens, along with Allseasons, All Seasons, Four Seasons, Muddy Wellies, Graduate Gardens (or Landscapes), Evergreen Gardens and a host of other similar names, to be found even in the same county as each other.
Your choice will, to a certain extent, depend on your local marketplace. Having shortlisted a few names, it may pay to check out your region, via telephone books/Google etc and research who else has a name the same or nearly the same. Perhaps you will discover they have a very poor reputation, and you do not want to be associated with that name!
Beware too, that some names are ‘owned’ by businesses that will take great offence if you try and copy their name! One firm in particular, who shall remain nameless (!) started a business in the UK in the 90s. Their Trademark name was an easy one to copy, as it was made up of two words rolled into one. The first part of the name was half of another common word, and when combined, created a single word. A word that could be altered in around a dozen different ways with different spellings, some invented, others in common parlance.
The firm spent years and a fortune in lawyers, demanding that each new name closed down or changed their name to protect their Trade Mark! Although this occurred at the beginning of the Internet days, if they wanted to protect their Trade Mark name from all comers, they would have to own over fifty different domain names.
Common parlance is the key. Nobody nowadays can own or copyright letters or words that are in common use. Hence Town and Country Paving, Gardens, Landscapes, Garden-wear, Designs etc are not able to become copyrighted. Logos of course, and a combination of colour schemes, letter styles and fonts may fuse into one brand, and therefore the whole may be copyrighted.
I know of some growers and small nurseries who operate under a long term name involving only letters or a simple name. Perhaps a family name, or even the name of a village or location. They may have traded quietly for years under their chosen name, and are horrified to discover that another grower or gardener has started their own business, using the same name/letters/location name, in their area. Unfortunately for the long term user, there is nothing that the Law can do to prevent the new firm from using the same name if the words and letters are in everyday use.
Therefore, the best recourse for the original owner is to rebrand themselves by adding the words ‘The Original’ to the brand name. Something to establish that they are the original user of the name and therefore establish their credentials and gain fresh publicity from that scenario. As a grower, when displaying your wares at the local market, highlight the fact that you are the original, trading since 1980, rather than trying to compete with the newcomer.
Logos are of course, a different matter, especially if you have spent time and money on having your own design created. It is possible to protect a logo by taking our a patent on the image, but even then it is very difficult to prevent someone from using your logo if they choose to ignore you, especially if they live in another country, where Laws may differ from ours.
An example is the ‘trug’ logo which my son, Luke, designed for me for the Landscape Library and also my Consultancy business. It is a truly unique design, and one which caught the eye of a Garden Designer in America, who promptly utilised it as her own! No amount of emails and cajoling would make her desist in using the logo. She liked, it, and there was nothing I could do to stop her! (Nothing remotely affordable in any event).
So, if you see a Garden Designer, working in the United States of America, with a brilliant logo based on a trug containing books, you will know that there is a little of piece of English imagination advertising her practice!
Alan Sargent