Know-How Exchange : Branding

Where? Who is your primary target audience? What's important to them when they look for and select a screen printer? What words do they use when they discuss the subject? What makes you different from, and better than, other screen printers in your area? Why should a prospective customer choose you?

Impressive Silk
We build brands

Changing the name might help you avoid creditors, but it is also likely to cause you future business. If I was in your shoes, the first thing I would do would be to buy a stamp which says something like, "under new management" and I would stamp it on all correspondence and hang a sign on my wall and add the phrase to my email signature.

Next, I would approach creditors, treating them as prospects, explaining your situation, and trying to find out what if anything you can do to have a positive business relationship moving forward.

First on the non-marketing issue of avoiding debts from prior owner - at least in the US, this depends on how the purchase went and what you bought. If you bought the whole business, this usually means you also bought any debts or liabilities. So changing a name may not release you from this. A common way around this would have been to take over the lease and buy the equipment, but run the business under a new name (so you don't actually buy the business, just equipment and run this new business in same place). Assuming you didn't do this but did buy whole business, if there were debts or liabilities that you didn't know, your recourse may be to go after the prior owners to get them to pay them.

On the new name question - as said above, we could use more information on the business, location, what you specialize in, etc. All we know is you have a screen printing shop - without more info, all we could do is provide very generic names.