8 Steps To Make A Clothing Brand Name

More and more people are into building their own business. These people would prefer to be their own boss and manage their own time. One of the famous industries these business-minded people want to take is to build their clothing line. Therefore, it is necessary to learn how to create a clothing brand.

how-to-come-up-with-a-clothing-brand-name

What is a brand name?

A brand name distinguishes a specific business, company, enterprise, product, firm or service. Brand names are supposed to identify you and differentiate you from your competitors within a similar category.

In order to protect your brand identity, make sure that you register your brand name and have it trademarked.

8 Steps on how to make an excellent brand name

how to come up with a brand name for clothing

Starting your own business is not as easy as you think. You have to come up with an excellent brand name for your clothing line. It marks the start of your business venture, and it can somehow dictate the direction of your business.

Make sure that you follow these steps to come up with an excellent clothing brand name:

Make use of a clothing brand name generator while brainstorming

To start, come up with a list of all the names that you can think of. Regardless of whether it is funny or unrelated, just write it down.

Do not rush yourself because it is expected that it will take you days, weeks, or months. No matter how funny every word or every name gets, just continue writing it down so you will not forget it.

But in case this step already gives you a headache, you can ask for support by a name generator. There are tons of name generators available online. These name generators can give you a little push and a pinch of inspiration with a list of suggested names related to your clothing line business.

how to come up with clothing brand name

Shortlist your name ideas

Create a shortlist of your name ideas by omitting those that you think are not the best, not catchy, and silly to hear. However, this may give you a headache. Therefore, it is necessary that you have a checklist to guide you on which ones to retain and which ones to omit.

Let this be your simple checklist in omitting and retaining your name ideas.

Retain the name idea if: Omit the name idea if:
Simple yet unique Hard to remember
Not culturally offensive/sensitive (vulgar language, sexist, racist, homophobic) Culturally sensitive
Reflects the tagline Does not reflect the tagline

Identify what your brand name should represent

The next step after brainstorming is to identify what your brand name should represent. This will help you in crossing out the names you came up with that are not relevant to the brand you would like to portray.

Your brand name itself should justify and explain your products to the audience. Thus, making it stand out, appeal, and engage to the potential consumers.

how to name a clothing brand

Focus on your target audience

Your brand name should focus on your target audience. Do you want your brand to come off as elegant, sophisticated, sporty, fun, or youthful? Identify what you would like to portray as it should be the reflection of this quality.

Make a competitive analysis

One step in coming up with a better clothing brand name is to make a competitive analysis. List down and analyze what motivated the names of your competitors in the same industry.

Analyze and learn how the well-known clothing brand names, logo, mission, vision, and positioning made them big in the clothing industry.

Making a tremendous competitive analysis will help you better understand your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses, which could be an edge for you to do better than they could.

Make a background check

Ensure that you have done due diligence as this is essential. Make a background check if your shortlisted clothing brand names are not yet trademarked. This will save you not only your funds but also the time in facing legal concerns.

Background checking will also help you in choosing the best among the rest of your name ideas. You can retain your name ideas according to the following:

  1. The intended brand name, as well as the tagline, does not violate any laws.
  2. The intended brand name is not involved in any copyright issues. Hence, still available for trademark registration.
  3. The intended brand name is readable, has correct spelling, and easy to remember.
  4. The intended brand name, as well as the logo, does not commit any plagiarism concerns.

Learn more about trademarking a name and a logo by watching the video below:

Get some feedback

It is always a great idea to get some feedback from your peers, your target audience, or if possible, from people who also run fashion businesses. You can expand these by getting input from industry leaders, different business owners, tech futurists, linguists, and alike.

Get their opinion and insights as it will help you in your discernment when choosing your final clothing brand name.

Test your brand name

Do not forget to test your clothing brand name to know its potential for success. When you have finally chosen your final clothing brand name, you can check if it qualifies with the following traits below:

  1. Easy to read and to understand.
  2. Relevant and Relatable
  3. Creates a visual impact
  4. Longevity
  5. Should not make any resemblance with the existing brands
  6. It does not evoke any negativity or vulgarity

7 Different types of brand names

how to create a clothing brand name

If you plan to start your clothing line, make sure that you learn beforehand about different types of brand names. This will guide you in making your own brand identity.

Acronym Brand Names

Acronym Brand Names is one of the commonly used types of brand names. Although some acronym brand names are very much related to the company’s mission, vision, and services offered. Some companies have brand names that are not connected.

This type of brand name may be the easiest one to make because you can come up with anything you want to and may still deem to be practical and functional. However, it can also be considered as lacking direction, emotion, effort, and meaning.

Acronym brand names are often used to shift the air and reputation of the brand, especially if you are experiencing some backlash to your company.

However, as a company owner, you must be aware that these acronyms do not automatically mean that they will be catchy and easy to remember for your customers and target market.

Of course, you will want to trademark your own brand name. Therefore, you should be aware that even lawyers find it challenging to trademark such brand names.

Descriptive Brand Names

Descriptive brand names directly express the services and products that a business offers. These brand names tend to be average and do not leave any wow factor to customers.

It already describes what kind of business it is. The descriptive Brand name is a functional and utilitarian business name.

These descriptive names also tend to directly interpret and not let you squeeze out your creative juices. Brands that have descriptive branding often depend on making an innovative and catchy tagline instead.

But one of the advantages of having descriptive brand names is that you can clearly and directly communicate your mission, vision, and core competency.

However, one of its disadvantages is that it can make it challenging to trademark your brand name because it usually comes from common phrases and words.

how to make a clothing brand name

Evocative Brand Names

Evocative names are meant to use a metaphor to provide interpretations and take the minds of the customers the brand experience. These names are usually made unique by the creative minds of the brand name makers.

The evocative brand name is one of the consequential types of brand names, as it can create an impact on your business with such a brand voice.

Having an evocative brand is a good start for an influential entrance to the market with a great brand story, providing more than what you can offer.

Generally speaking, evocative brand names are among the easiest brand names to trademark due to their uniqueness and creativity.

Founder Brand Names

Regardless of the reasons, may it be for their heritage, pride, or future generations as they pass down the business, it is already expected that there are always brands named after the people who found them.

As the name implies, this brand name is named by the founder, the person who started the company. This type of brand name is more common in the earliest and old brands we know today.

One of the good sides of this type of brand name is that it is very much easy to trademark. However, it requires a great marketing strategy to make an impact on your business. Though, this can be easy if you started out famous before starting your own clothing line.

However, in the 21st century, you are less likely to encounter a company named after the founder. Founder brand names are less common these days.

how to name a clothing line

Geographical Brand Names

There are brand names that represent their location. This type of brand name reflects and embodies the history and culture of the brand’s geographical location.

However, there are limitations when you name your brand according to where it is established, which can be your downside, especially when you dream of making it big in the whole world, this could limit your target audience.

Invented Brand Names

Coming up with a good and catchy brand name is not an easy task. You have already done your research, scrolled throughout the dictionary, and still cannot find the perfect word for your clothing brand name. The best thing is just to invent your own words.

Frequently, these are etymological inventions that could have a deeper meaning. Invented brand names tend to be the most unique and most creative.

However, you may encounter challenges with the invented brand names as it demands a good marketing strategy and more time to make it known to the public and your target audience.

how to name clothing items

Lexical Brand Names

Lexical Brand Names are usually made of compound words, puns, onomatopoeia, and alike. These often rely on wordplay for easy memorization. This type of brand name is sharp and clever and can significantly impact your target audience.

However, this type of branding is not universal as it can come off as silly and cute which cannot be used for elegant or sophisticated clothing brands. Though, this is a good choice if your clothing line is meant for kids.

Learn some tips on how to create a clever clothing line name by watching the video below:

Summary

More and more people are into building their own business. Regardless if you want to be known as a local clothing line with specialization or would just prefer fast fashion by importing clothes, it is essential that you know how to name a clothing brand to make it a hit in the market.

 

how to come up with clothing brand names

Leave a Comment