You want something personal, makes sense and no one else has.
Hair By XYZ is exactly what it is but a very popular choice, unless you have a very unique name.
When I first starting hairdressing I spent ages trying out names and whatnot. I had a weird one when I first started, Hair Au Pair… I loved the sound of it but when questioned it was so wrong seeing as I don’t like kids and people thought I might look after them. Erm no! It made no sense whatsoever haha. Bless my little heart!
Eventually my friend said the most random thing to me. “You should have a green Mohican and start calling yourself Stephanique” I honestly have no idea what we were talking about at the time. I declined the suggestion of a green mohawk but I quite fancied the Stephanique bit.
To start with, the business was just called Stephanique and then I felt it was missing something. Styling. Perfect.
Stephanique Styling. Lovely job.
That was then what it was known as.
Make sure to look around. Google, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter etc… see if it’s in any news stories.
Do your due diligence. Don’t get all excited and start creating pretty logo’s to be massively disappointed a month later to discover someone down the road has been around for ages with the same name.
When I came to name The Hairy Business I came across a book called Build A Brand In 30 Days with Simon Middleton. I love that book. I have listened to it many times.
In there he says grab a piece of paper, fold it into x amount of pieces (cant remember, go 8 or 16) and then write down all the words that describe your business. So that was what I did.
Then you cross off the ones you don’t like and see what you’re left with.
I whittled it down and my Dad made the final choice. I had forgotten about that but my Mum told me last week he chose it. Cheers Daddio haha.
It can be a long job but you want to have something nice so do make sure you spend a bit of time on it.
Branding is a whole other area, we will talk about that another day, but for now. Choose your name.
You can of course change it later on but you want to try and stick to one for the duration.
Another ‘not to’. Try not to be too quirky. I on occasion was called Stephanique because they assumed that was my name. Despite correcting them a couple never quite got it was just Stephanie but at least they knew who I was.
I read a story, about Royal Mail. In 2001 after 350 years they changed the name to Consignia. Which literally makes no sense. None of us are even that old. According to a quick Google search, they changed it back after a year and 4 months. Always learning! Ha.
And please don’t be too long winded with it.
I was working on the syllables the other day. Not sure why, I just thought it was important!
The – Hair – Y – Biz – Niss = 5
Steph – An – Ique – Sty -Ling = 5
I was getting on for 6 or 7 the other day for the new business, it’s too much.
Short and sweet.
Easy to remember.
Google – 2
Tesla – 2
Gucci – 2
Getting it?
Maybe I will rebrand as Hairy then make billions of pounds haha. We can dream eh!
Anyway, that will get you on your merry way.
Good luck.
Stephanie xo
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