What’s In A Name?

 

What’s in a name?  What does the name represent?  How do you want to be known?  Does it fit the product and the image? 

 The name change of my line was a long time in coming - 9 years to be exact.  This company was founded by Estelle Gracer in 1977 and the company name was Estelle Gracer Inc., which I shortened to Estelle Inc. when I purchased it in 1999.  I continued to use the logo, and name Estelle on the jacket labels but several years into owership I knew I needed to change the name of the line to make it my own. Unfortunately, everything I considered just wasn’t quite right.  I certainly couldn’t call the line Cindy White.  How uninspired did that sound?  No rhyme, no rhythm and no cachet …

One afternoon I was meeting with my dear friends and fabulous cheerleaders, Bruce Camber and Hattie Bryant of Small Business School. The topic of marketing came up and the three of us decided a name change was called for so we embarked on a little brainstorming session.  We were online, checking out words for ribbon, weaving, sweater, jacket etc. in foreign languages.  There was nothing in French, nothing in German and nothing in Italian.  The suggestion was made that we make it more personal but of course we had already ruled out Cindy White.  I happened to be in Italian at the time so I looked up White.  Hmmm, the feminine form of White in Italian is Bianca – Interesting… What could I do with that?  To me the obvious name to pair with it came from a chance remark from my daughter-in-law Lori.  Several months before she had made the comment that if she and my son Nathan had children I shouldn’t be called “Grandma” – it had to be something else like “Cici”.  OMG!  That was it!  Cici Bianca!