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Clothing brands run off of reputation and to become reputable, you need to have a memorable brand name.
We understand that it can be extremely difficult to come up with a clothing brand name because of a number of different reasons.
One of which is that there are countless clothing brands out there and you don’t want yours to sound too similar to them.
To help overcome this issue, we have compiled this complete guide. Now let’s take a look at some of the things you need to consider before you get started.
Quick Summary
In this post, we will discuss what steps you can take to come up with a brand name for your clothing company or fashion brand.
So without further ado, let’s get started.
What Are Some Factors to Keep in Mind When I Name My Clothing Brand?
When you develop your business’s brand, you will eventually come to the stage where you have to name it.
If you’ve done your research, at this point, you should be well-acquainted with who your target audience is and what their interests are. We highly recommend all of our readers perform audience research before they make any crucial decisions regarding their brand.
So, if you’ve done effective audience research, you will know what their interests are, how they speak and what type of language they would be receptive to.
Hence, the audience’s interests should factor into what you name your brand.
You need to name it something that would be instantly recognizable by them and something that they could relate to. That’ll help make a lasting impression on them and ensure they don’t forget about your brand after scrolling past your ad.
In addition to this, it should also be noted that your brand name should be something that falls in line with your brand’s personality. All of your brand’s messaging needs to be consistent and cohesive. Your brand name is definitely a part of that.
Other additional tips to come up with a brand name include:
- Perform extensive market research to find out who your prominent competitors are. When you name your clothing brand, ensure that the name does not sound similar to any of your competitors.
- Ensure that your brand name is not something that can easily be ripped off or copied.
- Think about the future. For example, you might be a swimsuit brand at the current moment but if you have plans to extend your business to other clothing, keep this in mind. Ensure the name is something that will work with future business expansion.
- In most cases, the name of your brand will also be the domain name for your business website as well. Hence, before you decide on a name, check domain availability.
One thing we cannot stress enough is to run your decided name through a focus group. This could be a group of peers, colleagues, friends, family, or just anybody whose opinions you trust.
They might help you point out any flaws in your clothing brand or fashion brand name. For example, it may sound too similar to another competitor which you may not have been aware of.
They can also give you pointers on how the fashion brand name might sound like something else; Something that may not have occurred to you.
Always try to get an opinion from as many different people as possible before you decide on a name for your clothing brand business.
How to Come Up with a Brand Name for Your Clothing Line?
In this section, we’ll provide actionable steps that you can take yourself to come up with a suitable brand name for your fashion brand or clothing brand.
Step 1: Perform Market Research
As with most things that have to do with branding, research is essential and should be done extensively before you actually start to decide on a brand name.
Chances are you may already have done a whole bunch of research as part of your branding efforts for your clothing store. You can use this research to kind of get an idea of what types of names your target audience would be receptive to.
Audience research, as we’ve stated above, can play a crucial role to ensure you pick a clothing brand name that is memorable.
We highly recommend that you talk to members of your target audience as well to get a feel for what they would relate to.
Step 2: Perform Competitor Research
Competitor research is also quite important, if not more important, than audience research.
Clothing brand names have the tendency to be quite similar and this can also happen to you if you don’t research your competitors properly.
There are a few reasons why you would want to research your competitors:
- You can get an idea of what types of brand names can resonate well with your audience (as you and your competitors will have the same target audience).
- You can ensure that the name you decide for your clothing line is not similar to any of your competitors.
You definitely want to avoid having a name that’s too similar to one of your competitors as that can cause a lot of problems for your clothing business.
For example, assume that your brand name is quite similar to another competitor that is quite successful within your particular niche.
Now, if your competitor messes up in some way, say, a news story comes out that they treat their employees unfairly.
All of that negative press will spill over to your clothing brand as well.
People will 100% confuse your brand with your competitor and as a result, not only will you lose customers but you’ll also have trouble finding new ones.
Hence, ensure that your business name is not similar to other clothing brand names and that it cannot be easily replicated by newer brands after you.
Step 3: Brainstorm as Many Brand Names as You Can
To start off, it’s a good idea to get your entire team together and have a brainstorming session to come up with a name.
Remember that at this stage, you don’t have to be too detailed or extensive with your ideas. It’s a good idea to just let the creative juices flow and note down every potential clothing brand name that comes into your mind.
Make sure to keep a list of all your brand name ideas for reference later.
Quick tip: At this stage, it does not even have to be a full-fledged brand name.
You can even throw out just abstract ideas and concepts to note down and flesh them out at a later stage.
Always remember that a brainstorming session is all about throwing out as many clothing brand name ideas as you can.
Step 4: Take Note of Your Favorites
Once you and your team have provided all of the ideas, it’s time to sit down and really look at what you have.
This is the point where you can highlight or star any of the favorites that you and your team may have from the list. This is the stage where you start to trim the numbers down and start to focus on the options that you have.
You can do this through voting from your team or just from creative input from everyone to ensure your team is on the same page when it comes to the brand name.
Step 5: Utilize Word Association
This is something you can do at your initial brainstorming session or you can do it at this stage once you have narrowed the list down to a few options.
Think about your brand, its personality, and the values that it stands for.
What are the words that come into your mind?
Note down as many as you can. We recommend that you populate the list with at least 100 keywords. If you get stuck at any point, you can ask your team for help. You can also use the help of an online thesaurus to find synonyms and relevant words.
Once you have a populated list, you can use those words to tinker with the trimmed-down list of brand names that you have.
Hence, you would use the words to adjust and amend the brand name options you have. You’d be surprised as to how many new clothing brand name ideas you will come up with.
When you combine the words with your brand names, you may find the perfect fashion brand name for yourself.
Step 6: Consider Foreign Languages
This may not be a step you need to take if you just want to market your fashion brand locally. However, if you intend to ship internationally, then it’s a good idea to consider foreign languages when you decide on a brand name.
Even if you don’t intend to ship internationally initially, you may expand your business to it later. Hence, take that into consideration.
The reason you want to research foreign languages before you decide on a name is that you want to ensure it doesn’t have negative connotations in other languages.
A good clothing brand name is one that is universal and can captivate a majority of your target audience. If that target audience includes people overseas, you must do the appropriate research to ensure you can relate to them as well.
Step 7: Consider a Clothing Brand Name Generator
There are many different brand name generators available online that can provide you with clothing line name ideas.
However, these names are often inappropriate and not what you’re looking for when they are generated in a vacuum.
If you have keywords and concepts for brand names already, then name generators can definitely be useful.
All you have to do is insert keywords and the generator will provide you with ideas for brand names that you may not have thought of.
It’s not that you will use the name generator to just come up with a fashion brand name.
We encourage the use of generators such as these for ideas for clothing brand names. In the end, you should tinker with ideas as much as you can to ensure they speak for your brand’s personality.
Remember that your brand represents you. A name generator will not be able to properly articulate your ideas through a name.
It can give you a starting point and then you can adjust it to suit your values.
Step 8: Create a Shortlist
Now you have to shorten the list down even more until you are left with, ideally, 2 – 3 clothing brand names.
Now, the goal is to weigh out all the pros and cons of the names on your shortlist to finally find the one that you will use.
For this, you’ll have to perform many types of tests to ensure the name you choose will indeed work best for your clothing brand.
To come up with the shortlist:
- Set the list aside for a couple of days and come back to it with a pair of fresh eyes.
- When you come back to the list, try to remember which of the names you can recall from memory. This can give you an inkling of which clothing brand names are the most memorable on your list.
- Go over the list once again and eliminate all the clothing brand names that you and your team don’t think are good enough.
Step 9: Run Some Tests
Now that you have a shortlist of 2 – 3 clothing brand names, it’s time to run a few tests to see which one of them can push through.
First of all, you need to check for the availability of all of the names on your shortlist.
When it comes to availability, the first thing you should look at is the domain name. Check out any domain name registrar to check out whether the domain names for the names on your shortlist are available or not.
Ideally, it would be a good idea to not just buy the .com domain name but also other domain names such as .net, .biz, etc.
Hence, the name that is available for most types of domains will be ideal.
Next, you need to check out the United States Patent and Trademark Office’s trademark database to ensure the fashion brand names on your list are still available.
Again, the names that haven’t already been trademarked will still be on your list. If you find that any of your potential names are unavailable, you can strike it off of your list.
At this point, there’s a high chance that you may already be down to one fashion brand name. However, if you are not, there are a couple of other tests you can run.
Check the dictionary to ensure any of the brand names you’ve decided on have any negative connotations. If they do, strike them off your list.
Finally, perform a Google search for all of the fashion brand names. Check the results to ensure there aren’t any similar names already being used.
After this set of tests, there’s a high chance you may be left with only one name. If you are not, then it’s up to your judgment to decide which business name would be best for your clothing brand.
Step 10: Incorporate it into Your Branding and Test for Readability
Set up some marketing content for your brand and test the content with your business name for readability.
Make sure to check out the content on all sorts of different electronic devices to ensure it’s readable on all of them.
You can consider its effectiveness based on how well the audience remembers your brand name. If your name is not memorable, audiences will forget about it and you will lose any customers you may have otherwise gained through word-of-mouth.
Also, ensure that any links you have to include within your marketing content are shortened so that they don’t take up a lot of space.
Always remember that the focus needs to be on your brand name and your brand messaging. You don’t want a long, janky URL coming in the way of that. To shorten a link, you can use any URL shortener available online.
To shorten your link through Pixelfy, register your account and log in.
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Step 1: After you log into Pixelfy, you will be at the dashboard page. From here, you can check out analytics of previously shortened links and you can also shorten new links.
To shorten new links, you will use the URL shortener box located at the top of the dashboard page.
Step 2: Copy any URL that you want to shorten and use within your marketing content and paste it into the URL shortener box. Click the “Shorten” button to go to the next page.
Step 3: On the next page, you will receive the shortened link that you can copy and use within any marketing content that you want.
This will ensure that your brand name is clear to readers.
Wrapping Things Up…
We hope we provided some help in terms of coming up with business name ideas for your clothing brand.
Fashion brands can be very difficult to name but if you perform the appropriate research, you’ll have a memorable name for yours in no time.
If you have any further questions, please reach out to us in the comments below.
Absolutely, let's break down the key concepts and steps outlined in the article on naming a clothing brand:
Factors to Consider When Naming Your Clothing Brand:
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Target Audience Research:
- Understand your audience's interests, language, and preferences.
- A brand name should resonate with and be memorable to the target audience.
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Brand Personality Alignment:
- Consistency is crucial across your brand messaging.
- The brand name should reflect and align with your brand's personality.
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Differentiation and Uniqueness:
- Ensure the name doesn't resemble competitors' names.
- Avoid easily replicable or similar-sounding names to prevent confusion or negative associations.
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Future Expansion and Domain Name Availability:
- Consider potential future business expansions and ensure the chosen name aligns.
- Check domain availability before finalizing the brand name.
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Focus Group Evaluation:
- Seek feedback from peers, colleagues, friends, or trusted individuals to identify any potential issues or similarities with existing brands.
Steps to Develop a Brand Name for Your Clothing Line:
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Market Research:
- Understand market trends, audience preferences, and naming conventions.
-
Competitor Research:
- Avoid similarities to competitors' names to maintain distinctiveness.
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Brainstorming:
- Engage your team in a brainstorming session to generate numerous name ideas.
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Selecting Favorites:
- Highlight or star the favorite names from the brainstormed list.
-
Word Association:
- Use associated words and keywords related to your brand's values and personality to refine the list of names.
-
Considering Foreign Languages:
- If targeting international markets, ensure the name doesn't have negative connotations in other languages.
-
Brand Name Generator:
- Utilize online generators for inspiration but customize generated names to fit your brand's identity.
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Creating a Shortlist:
- Narrow down the list to 2-3 potential brand names based on team preferences and creativity.
-
Running Tests:
- Check domain availability and trademark databases.
- Verify negative connotations and uniqueness through dictionary and Google searches.
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Incorporating into Branding and Testing:
- Test the chosen name in marketing content for readability and memorability across various devices.
- Use shortened URLs in marketing to maintain focus on the brand name.
The comprehensive approach emphasizes the importance of thorough research, creativity, differentiation, and testing when developing a brand name, particularly within the clothing industry.
