The Passionate Entrepreneur - The Name of the Game

I collect cute business names -- All You Knead (a bakery), the Barking Lot (a dog groomer), Shear Ecstasy (a hair salon). A clever business name can be an excellent marketing tool, making your company immediately memorable.

But a cute or memorable name isn't necessarily a requirement or guarantee of success. There's nothing particularly memorable about the names General Electric, Safeway, or the Walt Disney Company, but those companies have certainly been huge successes.

Coming up with a business name can be one of the most creative aspects of starting a business or introducing a new product, but it can also be one of the most frustrating. Big companies spend hundreds of thousands of dollars researching names, and sometimes even they fall flat on their faces.