Salon Startup: What’s On Your Business Card?

If you’re forging into the body-bronzing business for the first time, you’ll find the adage, “It’s all in the name” is true. The equipment, services, prices and staff may all be first-rate, but how potential customers perceive the salon hinges on what they see headlining its Web site or hanging outside its front door.

Though imperative for a new multi-salon company, the name game has higher stakes for smaller tanning businesses—particularly single salons that will rely more on name recognition because they don’t have the budget to support many forms of marketing, says Hal Meyer, CEO of Naming Systems in Wakefield, R.I.

Chris DeMassa, president of TradeMark Express in Los Altos, Calif., emphasizes this point, saying, “It’s the face of your business. It’s what you’re going to be recognized for, and it’s how people are going to remember you.”

Several consultants weighed in on salon nomenclature. First of all, any name should appeal to the audience, not just the owner, says Nan Budinger, principal of Metaphor Name Consultants in San Francisco. An inside joke between friends and family would be lost on your customers. Similarly, Budinger warns against dated titles that, though popular now, could make your salon less than hip before long.

“Think of it in terms of ‘groovy,’” she says. “You don’t want to name your salon with verbal bell-bottoms.” In other words, if you had your heart set on “Bling Bling Tanning,” you might want to reconsider. Also be mindful of connotations your name may give. You don’t want someone to take a photo of the sign so late-night comedians can mock your business.

With a lot of successful names already taken off the market by current salons, piracy won’t win you any points either. Make sure to search the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (www.uspto.org) to ensure that a potential name isn’t a copycat version of another salon. Launching with a particular name and then having to re-do the signs, listings and stationery because of trademark law would be a major step back, Budinger says.

With a bevy of naming “don’ts,” what options are you left with? Plenty, says Lara Dale, who co-started Keizer, Ore.- based Ghostbusters Tanning Salon seven years ago. “I think it’s a good idea to go for an original name,” she says. “There are a lot of salons with very similar names, so going with something unique and fun will set you apart, and people will remember you over the other guy.”

A good salon name definitely doesn’t limit its scope to local, so try to dub your business with a name that would leave the door open for expansion and national or global exposure. Good examples are the European Image salons based in Roslyn Heights, N.Y., or the Body and Sol (Spanish for “sun”) Tanning Boutiques based in Yorktown, Va.

Overall, keep it simple and memorable, and remember the alphabet. If someone looks up tanning salons in the phone book, they will see the “A”s first, which means “Zebra Tan,” probably wouldn’t get many inquiries. Not to mention the zebra reference falls under the category of connotations to avoid.

Once a good name is in place, Meyer says, it is worth the cost to trademark it. Preferably, the listing for the company Web site should be the same as the name, too. Web domain names are quite affordable these days at only a few dollars per month.

If you’re stuck, you always can outsource the naming task to a search company or a consultant, who can check the trademark information for you and also craft a creative name. Costs range from $5,000 to $50,000 depending on the size of the company and scope of the naming program.