Business Names

[Printficient]

What is the back story on your business name?

[mk162]

Repla Prints...our last name is Alpers.  Spell it backwards without the S, and you've got Repla.

Also sounds like replica or replicate.  So it works.

[mooseman]

the SHIRT HOUSE because our work is pretty crappy.
Our mascot is a SHIRT HOUSE MOUSE......
mooseman

[mavgraph]

I know it's corny, but I was a huge Top Gun fan. The rest is history.

[GKitson]

Repla Prints...our last name is Alpers.  Spell it backwards without the S, and you've got Repla.

Also sounds like replica or replicate.  So it works.

Makes me think of a fishing lure.  Ah sitting by the lake, fishing, cool breeze, cold beverage and good conversation.  Don't seem to make the time any more, pity!

~Kitson

[Printficient]

Not Screen Printing but I had a business called Legerdemainia.  I taught Magic to elementary school children.  Had a newsletter called The Prestidigitator.  Backboard Tennis.  I coached tennis.  The Mime Network.  Did different types of "Grams"  The Fan-o-Gram.  Kidnap-o-Gram. etc.

[Frog]

To tell the truth, I have no idea where the idea for Frog Prints came from, but immediately got compliments and even a little business from those who saw it in the Yellow Pages, and liked it.
I was working full time at Andy's Tee Shirts at the time, 1988, and their eventual art director Ron Weber was brand new to the industry, working on an auto, and happy to share his art skills with me and whipped out my crowned froggy in a minute or so.
I added some rub-off letters, and the logo was born
The logo helps some visually get the play on words, if they didn't get it in the first place.

And I still have some folks ask me what I have to do with frogs.

[Gilligan]

Interesting story for my computer company as it has "two names" in a sense (not really or legally).

911 PC Emergency.  The name came from a PIZZA place in Taos, NM.  When we would go skiing we always remembered one night to order from Pizza Emergency (who's number ended in 911).  I thought it was clever and we always remembered the name because it was clever enough.  Of course PC Emergency was taken on the web in any regular iteration.  So I just added the "911" part and started asking questions.

Called the Secretary of State, no problem.  Called the phone company (AT&T), no problem.  Sweet.  Got it all under way as my LLC and was moving along quite swimmingly when I get a call from AT&T's phone book.  "Sorry, we can't print '911 PC Emergency' in the phone book, it's against our charter."  What?!?!  I asked about this BEFORE I even got my LEGAL business name!  Then they said "Well, how about we list it as 'Kevin's Computer Repair?"  WHAT?!  That has NOTHING to do with my business!!  I might as well call it 'Peanut Butter and Jelly Computers' at that point!!

We went round and around for like 15-20 minutes of me bitching about how they sold me the number and now won't list it.  At the end of the conversation she said "So you don't want to list it at all?"  To which I replied "No, list it as 'Peanut Butter and Jelly Computers'!"  She paused, "are you serious?"  "Yeah!  If you aren't going to list my legal business name then I might as well get a joke out of it at YOUR expense!"

So to this day it's listed that way and people still call us up and say "Is this 'Peanut Butter and Jelly Computers'??"  LOL  We actually get calls just because of it and some of our customers wish we would just go with it.  So we don't really care if we have to leave it that way, which apparently we don't have a choice anyway.  I've had sales people say "I'm gonna get this fixed for you."  Then a couple weeks later claim that they went as high as they could and it just can't be done.

Oh and get this, "911 PC Emergency" would be listed under the N's in the phone book.  So where the F is the confusion with listing my number?!?!

[spotcolorsupply]

We figured "Spot Color" is the most common form of printing (at least for our customer base)... Throw in "Supply" (What we do)... Bam we had a name 

We have found that over the phone people seem to hear "Scott Color Supply", "Stop Color Supply" or "Spot Colors Supply", but when folks get it right people seem to remember it 

[rmonks]

Walking Billboards.  Go figure.

[ebscreen]

Gilly that's hilarious.

But yeah, eff AT&T. Effing company couldn't find it's own butt with two hands.


My own is because of an admiration for a now defunct record company East Bay Menace.

[bimmridder]

There are a few stories around about ours. The story on the web site is pure fiction. The truth is....When we bought the company twenty some years ago, it was called Iowa Screen Print. It didn't take us long to figure out that not many people wanted to buy shirts from a bunch of country hicks from Iowa. We tried to come up with cool names and did legal searches, but nothing seemed right. I threw the name Bimm Ridder out there. That is what we used to call each other when we were kids, and wanted to insult someone. We could say it in front of adults and no one knew what it meant. It was a term we made up to mean anything like "dumb a$$", $hit for brains", or anything along those lines. We all knew what it meant. So when we were looking for a unique name, that's what we went with. (I don't think my business partners even knew what it "meant" at the time" Stupid story, but the truth.   

[mk162]

There are a few stories around about ours. The story on the web site is pure fiction. The truth is....When we bought the company twenty some years ago, it was called Iowa Screen Print. It didn't take us long to figure out that not many people wanted to buy shirts from a bunch of country hicks from Iowa. We tried to come up with cool names and did legal searches, but nothing seemed right. I threw the name Bimm Ridder out there. That is what we used to call each other when we were kids, and wanted to insult someone. We could say it in front of adults and no one knew what it meant. It was a term we made up to mean anything like "dumb a$$", $hit for brains", or anything along those lines. We all knew what it meant. So when we were looking for a unique name, that's what we went with. (I don't think my business partners even knew what it "meant" at the time" Stupid story, but the truth.   

FALSE..awesome story.

[Frog]

There are a few stories around about ours. The story on the web site is pure fiction.

Fiction on the internet? Outrageous!

Next you'll tell me that it was fiction that ebay grew from a search for collectible Pez dispensers!

[blue moon]

I kinda did not have a choice. the guy I partnered with had blue moon embroidery, so it made sense to stick with it. We were going to partner into one entity over time, thus the blue moon promotional on all the marketing material, but it never happened. We had different ideas about how a business should be run so we parted ways and I eventually bought him out.

pierre