Help with change of business name!

[soapsud_81]

Myself and my husband are in the midst of starting up our soap making business - yeah!

Got our business name, got our safety assessments back - all good - got the website registered (.co.uk) - then the other day, my husband was searching online and has seen that someone in the US has used our business name, selling the same products, under a .com address!!

When we researched before there wasnt a business with the name we thought up and have seen that this person has only just registered this business name with the .com, and only previously had a blog!

I just wanted to ask advice on whether this really matters, or if we can carry on and if it's too doubtful then we need to change the business name on the safety assessments and register another website!

It's really frustrating, and a bit of a setback - any advice on what we should do now, and how we can best protect our name next time (we know that we can register as a ltd co on company house but we don't want to do that because we are only a small business starting up).
Very annoying!!

Thanks,

Soapsud.

[Teresa]

You could keep your business name different to the website address. They don't have to be the same, if you could come up with a relevant name for your website relating to the products then that could be a good way around your dilemma

[soapsud_81]

Thanks but...

Hi Theresa,

Thanks for your suggestion but I just want to clarify what you mean...as we have already registered a website under the business name we thought of, do you mean that we should still use this but it would lead direct to our business, which would be a different name? Wouldn't that confuse people?

Also, I am hoping that we can change the name we used on the safety assessments we've just had made up for us!

Does anyone actually get a trademark registered when they have started up their own businesses? Or has it not been worth it when starting out as a small trader in the craft world?

Thanks,

Soap Sud

[PoppyPaula]

Hi.
Couldn't you just add uk on to the end of your business name rather than completely changing it?! Just an idea.
Paula x

[LibertyMel]

Hi
I'm no expert but I wouldn't worry too much, especially as its a US company. I think as said above if you just add uk to the biz name it would differentiate it. You're going to have customers mainly from uk anyway I should imagine. If you do change the name completely it would be worthwhile buying the domain name for both .co.uk and .com. I know many people do that. But saying that there are so many new ones coming up anyway such as .co .so that someone else could still register the same website name with one of the new ones.
Hope thats a little help! Good luck with your new venture!

[nattynetty]

....and how we can best protect our name next time (we know that we can register as a ltd co on company house but we don't want to do that because we are only a small business starting up).

The best thing to do to protect yourself from this kind of thing next time is to buy the .com and .org web addresses in addition to the .co.uk as that way no-one else can use them, they usually cost less than £10 a year so not a huge expense.

You could do what Poppy suggests and add UK to the end of your name so you can quickly be distinguished from the US company. Or as Teresa suggests keep your company name (you'll find lots of businesses share the same name - just google 'Curl Up and Dye' and you'll find loads of hairdressers with that name) and change your website address so people don't accidentally go on the US one instead. You could just leave your current one (if you haven't already produced loads of business cards etc with it on) and register a new similar one.

Alternatively, if the US website is immediately obvious to anyone who goes there that it's not from the UK then you could leave everything as it is - it doesn't take someone long to re-type the address with a .co.uk when they realise it's not the site they are looking for.

[soapsud_81]

Hi Everyone,

Thanks for all your great advice. We've talked about it and based on your advice, we have decided we are going to stick with our name, perhaps adding uk on the end (as long as we dont need special permissions for this!) or something similar so that confusion is minimal. But to be honest, although our products are both soap related, I think the types of products we each do can easily be distinguished.

Also, we have actually contacted the person who runs the business in the US, letting them know we exist and to confirm that they havent applied for registration with anyone official. It's been three days and they havent replied yet, so we aren't feeling too worried about it...We feel that if she didnt want us to use the name she would have come back to us straight away?


Thanks again all!

Soap_Sud81