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Choosing a Business Name

Published July 19th, 2021 by Dirty Blinds

We needed a business name that customers would remember when needing to have their blinds cleaned. After cleaning blinds for years, we ask a few questions…

Way back in 1987 we started up in the blind installation and window washing business. Our first business name was “Hang & Shine” Why that name? The reason is because we hung blinds (Hang) and washed windows (Shine) thus, Hang & Shine. We thought great, we found a good name. We thought it was cute and people would like it. So, we thought that issue was resolved.

However, 4 years later in 1991 we decided to add ultrasonic blind cleaning to our existing business. As a company that has been established (four (4) years at that time), we thought why not keep our same name (Hang & Shine), it seemed to fit with what we are doing as a company right? Well, after several years of having clients calling us everything but our business name, like Hung & Dried, Hang a Blind, Hanging Blinds, and more, we decided to talk to our customers and ask them one simple question. This question turned out to be the most important question in the history of our company. All employees of our company were instructed to ask EVERY customer this question the same exact way. As our employees arrived at the customers house to give them an estimate, and as they approached the first blind that needed cleaning, we asked “What do we have here?” We asked this opened ended question for a reason. We were interested in how our customers looked at this problem of cleaning their blinds, more importantly, how can we get them to remember us so they could refer us to family and friends. So, after two years of asking this question(in other words a real time tested survey) we determined that once that question was asked to over 700 customers, over 90% of these customers responded “dirty blinds” that’s why we called you or “my blinds are dirty” and other derivatives of them having dirty blinds.

After collecting all this data, we realized it is not what we think of our name, but how do our clients remember our company and name. So when they look at their own blinds and determine they need cleaning, it won’t be hard to remember us when they say “Man these blinds are dirty” or “wow, I have dirty blinds” it won’t be hard to remember when they ask themselves “ who cleaned my dirty blinds last time”…oh yea Dirtyblinds.com…Da!

However, before we decided on the obvious (changing our name to dirty blinds we purchased the domain name dirtyblinds.com )

and a used WHITE van. Once we built the new website for dirtyblinds.com we lettered the all-white van to just have our new name on it, without any other information about blind cleaning, no telephone numbers…Nothing but the name.

The idea behind this strategy was to see if people would say to themselves while driving, what do they do? “I have dirty blinds at home so it’s not hard to remember that company name” So once they got home and looked at their dirty blinds the name just rolls off their tongue and they would go online and check out what dirtyblinds.com is all about. That my friend is called Marketing not Advertising. As you know, it is hard to remember all the advertising on a van or truck while driving. That is why we wanted to have a potential customer be curious by going to our website to learn WAY MORE then what they can learn by just seeing a van or truck. The old ‘curiosity killed the cat” concept.

As the owner of our Ultrasonic Blind Cleaning Business, my background is in marketing. Anybody can pay someone to advertise your business (the operative word here is “PAY”). Just remember one thing, marketing takes your time, where as advertising takes more of your money. I chose to keep our hard-earned money in our pocket, while choosing to communicate with our customers and finding out their needs and concerns. “Choosing a smart and rememberable name for your business is the most important decision you will make. Forget names like “Bob’s Blind Cleaning” or “Shinny Blinds” etc.… People are not going to remember these types of names. They will forget the persons name “was the name Harrys Blind Cleaning?” or “Johns Blind Cleaning?” I guarantee you they wont look at their dirty blinds and think of names like I just mentioned above.

A 3D design with a name they will remember!

If you would like to review what we offer to the blind cleaning industry pertaining to blind cleaning training, blind repairs, marketing, and how to build a user friendly workshop, visit our on-line training site at dirtyblindstraining.com. We have over 30+ years of experience cleaning blinds with ultrasonics and 30+ years of experience marketing this business.


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