WIRED Store Grand Opening Party

We took a few days to visit New York City this past weekend.



We visited the WIRED Store grand opening on Thursday night and went back on Saturday to get a closer look at everything. The party was crazy! The ground floor had a bar made of ice, and still it was hot from all of the body heat! It's a 3-story structure with lots of little rooms and alcoves. SleepPhones were on the bottom floor, and RunPhones were on the top floor. Lots of people, finger foods, alcohol, and very cool products. Since the party was at 7pm, and we didn't get to eat before, I stood by the food entrance and had a bit of everything.



Here are some pictures of various products. There were lots of retro themes.





While in the City, we met with Dr. Jordan Stern of BlueSleep, the comprehensive sleep center in the financial district. We met with Adil Soomro, a talented Harvard MBA to discuss business. And we visited the 5th Avenue Sleepy's where SleepPhones are offered in New York City. Apparently, SleepPhones are sold out at that location, but they have not been able to get clearance from central purchasing to sell any more yet. We'll keep working with central purchasing!

Choosing a Company Name - 5 Tips

One of the first steps in establishing a company is choosing a name. This is a critical step, greatly impacting marketing, operations, and ultimately, success.

1. Unique and memorable
   It doesn't need to be anything fancy, but it needs to be unique.
   Do a Google search on the name you choose. Ideally, nothing should show up. For example, I just looked up Mary's Cleaning Service, and all of the entries on the first page of Google were for different businesses. If you chose that name, someone looking for your business online may have a hard time finding it.
   
   
2. Easy to spell and pronounce
   When talking on the phone, it's much easier to just tell someone a name than to have to spell it for them. The spelling problem applies to pleural words and punctuations too.
   
   Jose Espinosa Graphics 'n Design might seem like a nice graphic design place, but it might run into some problems.
   
   • Is Jose with an accent or not?
     
   • Is is spelled Hosay or Jose?
     
   • Is is Espinoza or Espinosa?
     
   • Is there an "s" at the end of Graphics or not?
     
   • Is the "'n" spelled with the "'" or "and"? Can you even put an apostrophe on a credit card, and do you have to spell it out for the state registration?
     
   
   
3. Ranks low in the alphabet
   You'd be surprised how many lists are alphabetized. If you are listed near the top, you would have a better chance of being seen. If I'm going through a phone book, and there are 50 auto detailing places, I might only call the first 5 places.
   
   
4. Domain name is available in .com
   Even if you plan to be a local business, you need to have a .com presence. That means your company name needs to be available as a domain name.
   
   You don't want to have to be the company that puts a hyphen in their name because someone else has it. You don't want to be the one with the .net or .biz name because someone else has the .com.
   
   Once you buy the .com, you may also want to buy the .net, .biz, and .co. Plus, you will also want to buy any potential misspellings of your name.
   We have all of the following, for example, and they all redirect to the same place:
   sleepphones.com
   sleephones.com
   sheepphones.com
   sleepphone.com
   
   
5. Descriptive of your brand
   The bulk of what you do needs to be in the name. If you provide sewing services and alterations, you can't name your place Martha Baker Services, even if your last name is Baker. People will expect you to bake pies for them.
   
   If what you do is in the name, it would be much easier for people to remember you and what you do.
   
   

In retrospect, could we have chosen a better name for AcousticSheep, LLC? Probably. But we were new to this whole thing. I don't think we did too badly with the name. It's unique, memorable, tells people that we deal with acoustics, and invokes an image of our cute sheep. However, is it hard to spell. People try to spell it with two Cs and separate the words frequently. It is at the top of many lists because it starts with "a," and we definitely have the unique domain name.

Be sure to do research online for other company naming tips. I only listed the ones I feel are most important, but there are many other potential pitfalls and advice on brainstorming.

Dinner Party

Now that we're getting busier, I have to start delegating work! Besides, I'm not very good at many things. I'm okay at many things, which has gotten us by so far. But there comes a point in a business where it needs to start looking more professional.

We've retained a great graphic designer to make the nice brochures that people get now. And we have a packaging expert designing retail packaging. Our friend is our website designer now - she helped put together the RunPhones website and is now tweaking the SleepPhones website.

We have another friend doing PR for us now. I run out of things to say on Twitter and Facebook, so while I check them 2-3 times a day, I don't have much to say. He's much better at finding things to say and to spin things in a way to make it funny or more engaging. For example, I would have just said, "someone stole my cousin-in-law's SleepPhones in England." He said, "One wonders how thieves can sleep at night, but this thief likely will sleep fine thanks to illegally-acquired SleepPhones." See, now that's more like it.

All of this to say that with all of the new talent we have, we had to make sure they all meet each other. We held a dinner party last week and took a time-lapse video of the event. 4 hours condensed into 30 seconds.