Speaker: 00:00:00

How do I name my store?

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How do I name my boutique?

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I need to talk to you because I have seen some of the absolute worst names for businesses.

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I've been doing this for a long time and I've seen names for businesses where I'm like,

yep, that's it.

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Yes, let's go.

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So I wanna talk to you about the strategy on how to name your boutique, retail store or

even an e-commerce site.

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So let's get into it.

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Today I'm gonna walk you through the biggest mistakes I see, how to really embrace what's

happening right now.

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to leverage that for a great name.

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And at the end, I'm gonna give you some tips about how to name your brand so you can

actually get away with charging a little bit more money for what you sell.

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If it's your first time finding my channel, I wanna say hi, I'm Emily.

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Welcome to Boutique Land.

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This is my little home in the internet where I teach you how to be the best boutique owner

you could ever be.

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I'm a retail strategist and inventory expert.

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I absolutely love helping people start their businesses.

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I've helped thousands of boutique owners along the way and I'm glad that you're here

because it seems like you're starting your journey.

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So start the right way with me.

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Okay, let's let's talk.

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I seem to do this a lot where I talk about

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the things not to do first.

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But again, I have to get this off my chest.

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It's a little bit of business therapy between you and me because I hear and see like every

name for lots of different types of businesses.

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It's like one of the things I noticed first and I have to talk about the idea of your name

being not only

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representative of who you are, but also relatable for your customer.

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You really want your customer to say this.

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And so when you decide to name it something very complicated or hard to spell or hard to

say, no one wants to say it.

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No one wants to search for it.

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And listen, if you're watching this, you're listening and you and I have discussed that

you picked a hard name and we said, you know what?

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It is what it is.

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Like, let's move forward.

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I want to just also say like, it's okay if you make a mistake.

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It's okay if you decide to switch names mid

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business, right?

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Like that's okay to do if it's going to feel more aligned for you.

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But what I see so often is that

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Women that want to start boutiques do it out of this sentimentality.

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So they're naming it after their grandmother.

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They're naming it after their daughter.

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They're naming it after their two kids.

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And while I absolutely love that idea and I think there's so much weight in the idea of

like, you've picked this name or you've lived with this name for a long time.

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So to you, it feels familiar to you.

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It feels easy to say, but I think you have to be realistic when you choose a name.

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That's just difficult.

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Remember there's so many situations where people are seeing the name

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of your store, whether it be on a website, on a little Facebook ad, as they're driving by

something on a vehicle, right?

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Like all of these places, we need your name, your logo, whatever that mark is that people

will remember you and understand what you're doing.

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We need it to be somewhat memorable and feel like a boutique, you know, like we don't need

it to feel so fashiony, but we need it to feel a little bit like, yeah, okay, that makes

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sense for a store name, a boutique name, a retail name.

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If you do decide to use some kind of personal name or a woman's name, just make it easy to

spell, make it easy to say, make it easy to communicate.

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You will spend your entire boutique career correcting people if it's something hard to

say.

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And if you're okay with that, fine, totally fine.

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But I think it's worth it for you to think through it a little bit and just ask around and

see if people really can pronounce it.

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Okay, one of my biggest pet peeves is the add-on name.

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So, and co collection.

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company and kids sons.

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I don't know like all of those kind of like if they don't mean anything don't use it.

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If that right like if it means something and you're like, no, no, no, we are doors and

company, you know, we sell doors and we represent other companies that sell doors or that

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sell the hinges and the parts and the whatever right?

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You see what I'm saying?

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If it fits with what you're doing, please do use it.

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But if it's just you being like, well, we want to beef up the name or it sounds better.

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You probably don't have a good name in the first place.

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So I want to challenge you on that because I think a lot of people are adding unnecessary

extra things to the end of their store.

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And sometimes we see people actually use the word couture, which the word couture means

custom made.

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That's the name of it.

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So unless, again, you're making custom made things, you are hand sewing like singular

pieces for people are making very singular things.

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Just don't do it.

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It's just confusing.

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just feels like in my mind it like breaks a fashion rule that probably doesn't exist, but

it kind of does.

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Okay, the other big pet peeve I have is using like Corp or Corporation or LLC like in your

official brand name.

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That is your legal structure.

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We love you for that.

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Maybe in certain states or you know where you're set up.

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You do need to legally have that somewhere.

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Don't make it part of your name.

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Like if you have to legally have it as part of your graphic fine.

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but like make it really small at the bottom.

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Like make it readable but not a part of what you're doing.

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Like it feels unnecessary and it's not gonna help your brand.

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So like, why do it?

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If you're new to Boutique Glenn and you haven't really gotten started yet or you're like

in the process of starting, I wanna refer you to my free class called How to Start a

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Clothing Boutique Business.

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It's like I said, entirely free.

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It's an hour of information for you to get started in the way I know grows five, six and

seven figure brands.

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So.

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All you have to do is type start below and we'll give you the link so you can get that

free masterclass.

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Let's talk a little bit about what's working right now.

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Again, we're in a modern time.

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We have access to a ton of research and a ton of ideas.

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There's no short of like names and things that could work out there.

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What we're seeing lately with modern brands is that they're short, creative, and easy to

use.

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They might be just a word like gap or lala or coach or goop.

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Right.

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These are just like interesting words.

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They're interesting things to say.

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Coach isn't really selling coaches, right?

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They're selling bags, but it does relate to like a stage coach, right?

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So that's a part of their symbology.

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That's a part of what they're doing across the brand.

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You can do that too.

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But the most important thing to start with is what is that name?

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Because symbols and logos like that's a secondary like situation to what is your actual

name of your boutique.

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There's also a ton of successful

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brands and businesses that sort of combine two ideas.

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So pink lily, red dress, mint julep or cult gaia, right?

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We're putting two words together.

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We're using a commonly used word or phrase and we're adopting it as the name of our store.

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Now all of those do have boutique on the end of them.

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I think in certain situations you can use pink lily boutique.

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or red dress boutique, but also there is that opportunity where all these brands do

shorten their names to the pink lily or just cult Gaia, right?

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Think of how you can make it really short, really impactful, and also just give an idea of

what you're doing.

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Like, I don't think I know exactly what mint julep is doing, but I can imagine it's a

little bit sweet, minty, um bubbly, right?

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Like all of these words kind of come to mind when we hear that.

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name and so it doesn't necessarily have to be like we sell clothes, know, clothes, ink or

buttons and fabric or blouse, you know, if you think of the example from Schitt's Creek

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blouse barn, right?

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It was really fitting because barn was representative of like they were really kind of out

in a rural area.

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Blouses were things that were like.

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fancy shirts, so it's a place where you can find kind of fancy shirts, blouse barn.

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It actually really makes sense.

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So think about how you want people to imagine your store, imagine what you're doing, and

make it relatable.

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This is the point where you could start doing some Google searches on, is someone else

using this?

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What are they using it for?

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What are you using it in?

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Is there a trademark under this name?

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We have to do also a little bit of due diligence after we're starting to think about what

we want to name our store and see what else is there.

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There is another woman called Emily Benson on Amazon who is a writer and she writes books

that are very different than me.

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And so what did I do?

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I put an A in the middle of my name and it's never capitalized on Amazon.

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I don't know why I fixed it a million times, but that distinction is really important.

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So even if you are close to another brand that could be helpful, but you need to make sure

that you're distinctive.

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Like you're not doing the same thing.

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This isn't me saying copy.

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What I'm saying is take the principle of what a lot of writers do, especially romance

writers will do this, where they pick a name for their writing name that's really close to

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an author they admire or an author that they think that their reader would also read.

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So they give themselves that name.

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so that it ends up sitting on the shelf next to them or it gets searched and it pops up

with them, right?

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You have to think about what are the other places, brands, ideas, people that you wanna be

connected to through this name and what you're choosing to represent as your business.

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I also would like urge you to try to maybe pick one name or two names that you put

together as a combined something.

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Feel free to post below.

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or shoot me a message with a name that you're thinking of and we can talk about it because

it is really you'll get into your name over to your thing and like it sounds so common to

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you to a certain extent, right?

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You need to make sure that before you go and register all this stuff and print business

cards and make signs whatever that people understand through your name what you're doing.

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So for me when I had the fashion truck, I would say to people well, you've seen a food

truck, right?

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Yeah, like I have a fashion truck.

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So instead of slinging burgers were slinging clothes, right?

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Like that made so much sense to people.

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They immediately understood what I was doing.

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They wanted to then learn more about it.

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If it takes you too long to say your name, you know, describe what you do, then it's hard

to get people on board.

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It's important for me to remind you that.

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A strong name will also raise the perceived value of your brand, the perceived value of

your store.

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I used to go through a time where people would say, you're a fashion bus.

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And I was like, I'm not a fashion bus.

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There was a fashion bus that existed and it was near me and it was a bus, but I was not a

bus.

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For me, was like, bus feels like a little bit hippie, a little bit festival, a little bit

boho.

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And that was not my style at all.

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So I made sure I was the fashion truck.

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I wanted to be related to food.

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trucks which were trending at the time because food trucks were like new and modern and

cool and like everyone wanted to try one.

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And so I made sure so often that I was like no I'm not bus I'm truck right just that

little perceived value just that switch bus versus truck made a really big difference in

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sort of my image and what people thought of me and what they would then pay for what I was

selling.

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I always got the feedback no one will pay in a truck yes they will.

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Make it look nice, make it smell nice, make it like a store, name it something cool, make

it an experience.

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I just found out that Dolce & Gabbana had me on their vision board for their Pop Up in the

Handtons this summer.

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It came out beautifully, it's lovely, and I heard from the creative director, my gosh,

Emily, you were so ahead of your time, we had you on our pin board.

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It's okay to feel like you are.

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ahead of something.

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It's okay to feel like if you are a really creative person and you're bringing this idea

to market that you might not be for everyone.

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That's actually good.

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And I want you to remember when it's not for everyone, make sure that the perceived value

for who you're selling it to is very clear.

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And that starts with your name that continues with your branding, how you design your

logo, the fonts, the colors, the imagery, how you start to take photographs.

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All of that should sit together because that is the visual clue of how much I should pay

for what you're selling.

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And there's a lot of people out there now online on TikTok that are buying things or that

are experiencing.

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this wave of merchandise coming through that really isn't the value that they're charging.

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It really isn't worth what people are paying.

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And so there's a really big pushback for the perceived price value relationship to be in

line with the name of the brand, with the imagery of the photo shoots, with the way that

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it's made, all of it.

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The integrity of all of this is a through line.

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And the through line really starts with that strong brand name, with that strong boutique

opener of like, yes,

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own boutique.

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You want to be proud saying that you want people to understand very quickly what you sell

who you are like what your vibe is and even if you don't do those things listen it's okay

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but I want you to have a strong start that's why also I've created this how to start a

successful clothing boutique webinar it's free just comment start below

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and we'll drop the link, you enter your email and you'll immediately be redirected to the

on-demand access for this class.

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And it is gonna give you even more tips.

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It's going to give you the step-by-step of what right now is really working.

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And I think that that's the most important thing to be successful right now.

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We can't be cheap and cheerful.

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We can't be luxury.

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We have to live somewhere in the middle and we cannot be boring or mediocre.

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or look like this person next to us.

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We have to be unique.

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We have to have that price value perception.

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And it all starts with what you name your store.

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So thank you so much for joining me.

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I hope this really helped you.

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And we're doing a whole series on these kind of starter topics.

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So I hope you'll just continue watching.

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Subscribe to the channel, like this video, comment below if you have questions or comment

start if you want that webinar.

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But thank you so much for staying to the end.

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As always, here's to making lots of friends and making lots of money.

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Bye.