How hard can it be to come up with a good name? Quite hard as it turns out... Little did we know how many things we had to consider!
Some things we learned:
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Our name should reflect the nature of the product without being too obvious
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Our name should reflect the values of the company
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Our name should not limit the company's future growth if we decide to develop other products
So far, so good. In the beginning, Jan came up with the working title FabTape. It was the most spontaneous reaction but honestly, it was our favorite name for most of the journey. However, another company already uses this name for an industrial duct tape. We feared our product was too close. Also, if we decide to develop another product in the future, FabTape might have been too limiting.
We opened a WorkFlowy list and kept filling it with ideas over several weeks. But nothing ever really satisfied us. That's where I prepared a name ideation workshop. It required six steps: (numbered list) What are our values? (individual brainstorm) What do you want our brand do be associated with? (individual brainstorm) Association game, taking the words generated during the above two steps and create associations Name generation, where each person generates 10 names within 10 minutes based on the associations in step three. Another round of name generation, where we could not use the names generated in step 4 A final round where we created names based on previous ideas in steps 4 and 5.
We ended up with a shortlist of 20 names that we shared with our friends and partners. In the end, the following names received most votes: (numbered list)
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FabTape
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NAPATA (Finnish: to grab)
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GREPP
Damn it! FabTape was a really good name... But we did not fuss about it any longer. We also really liked NAPATA but then feared it would require too much explanation for people who did not speak Finnish. And a Finnish friend told us it sounded weird...
So, we decided to go with GREPP! And honestly, we are excited about it. It's the Swedish word for 'grip' but close enough to the English version so that even non-Swedish-speaking people will understand. At the same time, the name reflects our values concerning local production and sustainability. It also reflects one of the key values of our product which is its outstanding grip! We hope you enjoy it as much as we do.
Take care,
Thomas
P.S. Neither of the top-voted options was result of our naming workshop! Makes me wonder about the benefits of such things…