Most inventions never leave the drawing board so I love giving my work stupid names. It’s fun and in the early stages of development I can spend my time developing the actual product rather than what to call it.
The stupidest names
The first sketch was called Rubber-ringer. Some of the following ideas was Drillite, Drillpack, Slingpack and Slingrack. Eventually it was named Lampowitz when I registered my invention at ALMI (A Swedish government funded institute for innovations).
International brand
When my invention got rid of the flashlight and became a better product I had to abandon the “Lamp” in Lampowitz. Just days after the first order I put my sister and her husband to quickly brainstorm a suitable brand name. They are professionals but did it for free of course.
Stupid & sexy
Apart from a wide range of sexy- perverted- kinky- rubber- latex- associated words they finally came up with an English word that works fine in Sweden so there was no problem naming it “Gearfix” with the catch phrase –“Keeps your gear in control”.
.COM
It might not be perfect that the gearfix.com domain was taken. But I was so pleased with Gearfix and my goal was to sell it in stores, not the web, so the domain issue didn’t bother me too much. My former experience managing a web shop taught me having a great domain name isn’t crucial any way.
