There should always be room in one’s life for a ‘first-time’, sometimes combined with “that’s the last time I’m doing that!”
This week for me, it was laying a concrete base. And it was at midday on a scorching hot day, which explains why I won’t be doing it again anytime soon. To be fair, it was not the concrete that broke me. It was having to wheelbarrow 20 loads of the wet sloppy stuff from the delivery lorry to the back of my garden. Uphill and in the burning hot sun. Without the help of my step-son, and kind lorry driver, I doubt that less than half of the load would have made it.
But the reason for this blog is not the sweat and tears resulting from trying to tame one cubic metre of wet concrete. It is the oh so clever name of the business delivering the material. In case you hadn’t guessed, William the Concreter is based near Battle. Famous as as the location of the 1066 battle of Hastings. Just down the road from where I live in sunny Eastbourne.
If you listen to the wonderful Mark Steel’s in Town, in Hastings, you can hear about the many local businesses who have found a way to incorporate this momentous battle into their names. But this is definitely the best:
I’ve been greatly enjoying the Netflix television series Sex Education recently. It’s a brilliantly funny and rude evocation of the traumas of teenage coming of age.
It is also a very odd mix of English teenagers, who appear to be studying in an American High School, set in the present day, but driving around in cars from the 1970’s. Including the infamous Austin Allegro, allegedly the worst car ever made.
The final episode of the first series is about the main character Otis Milburn trying to let-go of his hangups about sex. In his role as an amateur teenage sex-therapist he advises his client Lily Iglehart, who has similar issues, to ride her bike down a steep field as a way of ‘feeling the fear and doing it anyway’. He ends up he following her down the hill and flies over the handlebars.
But the point of this blog is the perfect product placement that follows. Lily who is something of an eccentric teen with a predilection for writing alien erotica, comforts our hero’s cut head and bruised ego, with her perfectly matched Nutcase crash helmet in full view.
This morning on my daily commute to work, pedaling hard on my Brompton bike, with its muted shade of blue, I spotted a really bright red bike across the road.
My ‘boring blue’ Brompton.
On closer inspection it turned out to be a brand new Jump electric cycle from innovative taxi company Uber.
A Jump bike in all its red glory.
As my eyeballs started to recover from the searingly bright red colour, I started thinking about how business like these really need to stand-out in order to be noticed by their potential customers. A rival to Jump is the Lime E electric hire bike scheme which started in San Francisco and launched here late last year.
The Lime E bike is also very eye-catching.
Based on non-scientific observations during my commute, I would say the lime green colour is slightly less noticeable than the red of Jump. And I wonder if potential hirers might be put off by the unfortunate similarity to Limey, the term of insult historically used by Americans about Brits.
The bright yellow Ofo bikes although very visible, failed after just a few months proving that although the market is growing it is also unstable.
Bright yellow, but not successful in the UK.
The original bike hire scheme in London is now called the Santander Cycle Scheme. And I first experienced it nearly ten years ago My first ride on a ‘Boris Bike’. Luckily for them they don’t need to be as noticeable as they can only be hired from fixed locations, unlike their ‘free roaming’ competitors above.
The first bike hire scheme in London, incorrectly known as Boris Bike.
Regular readers of this blog will know I am somewhat obsessed with the names of companies, products and services.
So often during my advice clinics I ‘help’ my clients discover the name they had chosen for their business has already been registered as a trade mark at the UK Intellectual Property Office. At this point some of them say they will no longer be able to start their business without the name they had their heart set on.
I explain that any name can work for a business. As long as it is legal, available and memorable. For example who would have thought these names based on fruit would have become associated with successful ventures (including the most valuable brand in the world).
But, if you can come up with a great name for a business then so much the better. For instance what would you call a vegetarian beef burger? A Vurger of course. And that is exactly what The Vurger Co has done.
You can read their story in detail here, but it is interesting to see that the idea started with health issues in a similar way to Deliciously Ella. And they way they initially tested the concept with a market stall. The best way to get feedback on a new edible product. I’m looking forward to finding out if they taste as good as they look.
Now I think about it, perhaps Vurger is too good a name, and they risk committing ‘Genericide’ in the long-term. This BBC website article explains how some brands that became household names lost the rights to their very own trade mark. ‘Genericide’: Brands destroyed by their own success. Maybe they will need to follow Google’s example and publish “rules for proper usage” of all its trademarks.
Regular readers of this blog will know I live in Eastbourne, basking in the delights of the ‘Sunshine Coast‘.
However our weather doesn’t always live up to expectations…
As residents of Eastbourne we are very aware of our much cooler and trendier neighbouring town of Lewes. There are too many hip aspects to list in full, but here are a few:
Lewes is probably most famous for its anarchic Bonfire Night. Held every November 5th, with five competing bonfire societies marching noisily through the town, and the burning of controversial effigies.
It has had its own brewery since 1790 in shape of Harveys Brewery. They produce a beer in honour of Tom Pain their local celebrity revolutionary and founding father of the United States.
They print their own currency in the form of the Lewes Pound, designed to help support the local economy.
It has an internationally recognised opera house nearby at Glyndebourne.
The local football team founded in 1885 is now owned by the fans, and in 2017 became the first in the world to introduce equal pay to the mens’ and womens’ teams.
So I shouldn’t have been surprised when the logs I needed for my wood burning stove turned out to come from a Lewes company called Just Log It.
Which on further investigation turns out to be a subsidiary of Just Cool It.
Which on goes to reinforce Lewes’s status as the King of Cool.
Lewes
The town is so pretty, old and curious – all tile-hung cottages with the whiff of hops on the air from Harvey’s Brewery – it could be an exhibit on Antiques Roadshow. But don’t be fooled. The town is full of Marxist lecturers from Sussex University. They like to burn effigies of David Cameron at their famous/infamous Bonfire bight. The Headstrong Club has been revived. And they still print Tom Paine’s scorching pamphlets at a press on the High Street. The revolution may still come. Let’s move to Lewes, East Sussex: ‘Once a hotbed of radicalism’ From the Guardian Newspaper
So many entrepreneurs I meet want to have a name that describes what their product does. But ironically the UK IPO may not allow you to register a name as a trade mark if “it is a descriptive word or term.”
For example Apple Inc would not be allowed to register their trade mark for fruit, as it would block everyone else from using the word apple. Much better is come up with a clever play on words that gets across what your product does. Even better if it achieves it in a fun way.
Now that autumn is here in London, it is time to think about trying to stay dry when travelling around the city. I wrote about DryPatch – A BIPC success story with a great sense of humour a while ago. But more recently have spotted quite a few of these on my commute to work.
The name Ass Savers may not be to everyone’s taste, but it certainly is short, simple and memorable – the most important aspects of a trade mark.
So far the owners have only registered the name under Nice Class 12, Vehicles and Conveyances for Bicycle mudguards. So it looks as though they aren’t ready to take over the world with their brand just yet.
Update! 24 October 2017
One of our clients designer Roderick Brosse at the Business & IP Centre has just won the the top award at this weekend’s British Invention Show with a minimal mudguard. His “Mud Bug” won the Diamond Award for British Invention.
Roderick has yet to find a manufacturer for his impressive invention, so watch this space.
The pencils only rule at the British Library means I have become closely acquainted with the ancient art of pencil sharpening.
Having tried many different types over the years and found them all wanting, I finally splashed out on a KutsuwaRS015BK.
The previous designs were either too blunt or too flimsy to produce a properly sharp nib. Or they broke off the end of the pencil lead just as it was on the point of being ready to use.
Kutsuwa Co., Ltd. was founded in 1910 as a stationery wholesaler in Osaka, Japan. In 1965, they started to design and manufacturer its own branded products. The model I chose came in a range of vibrant colours as one might expect from a Japanese manufacturer, but I went for the boring black model.
It is still early days, but so far I am very happy with the way this machine produces wonderfully sharp pencils, easily and quickly, as well as collecting the messy cuttings in a waste box.
So the lesson learnt here, once again, is if you want a good pencil sharpener you need to pay that bit extra.
Perhaps I should have researched this topic more thoroughly before spending my money. The Pencil Revolution contains many reviews of sharpeners. Or I could have read The art of sharpening pencils on Mathew James Taylor’s blog. Where I would learnt about the standard point, the chisel point, the needle point, or the bullet point. Although I definitely wouldn’t have chosen his favourite rather disturbing sharpener below.
I shouldn’t have been surprised to discover the ultimate sharpeners on the Manufactum website, as they specialise in goods made with traditional manufacturing methods and materials. They include the beautifully simple Dux Dual Pencil Sharpener Aluminium and the outrageously expensive but indestructible Caran d’Ache Steel Pencil Sharpening Machine.
Dux Dual Pencil Sharpener AluminiumCaran d’Ache Steel
On my regular drive to my parents house I pass several food vans catering to the hungry driver.
Their names vary from the mundane Joe’s Food Shack, to the humorous such as Mrs Doyles, which alludes to the iconic character appearing in the legendary Father Ted comedy series.
But my favourite is a tiny little white van with a bright red Yummy’s logo and a 1950’s style waitress winking out at the passing motorists. When you add in their strapline Well Tasty, I think they get credit for an effective promotion in a competitive market.
On my travels around Sussex I recently found myself looking at the back of a van with this very distinctive image staring back at me. On further inspection I discovered it wasn’t the reincarnation of ZZ Top, but Bearded Bros Removals of Brighton. As you can see from this screen shot below, they are acually quite a friendly bunch.
This started me thinking about removals companies and how some of them attract customers using unusual and memorable names.
When I moved house last year we used Rhino Removals. Who happily did lived up to their reputation rather than their name, and were nice and gentle with packing up and moving our household. I’m not sure the artwork they use on the side of their vans is helpful from this point of view.I did a little bit of research using the Business & IP Centre company databases and came up with list of fun names for removals firms. I was glad to see there was an Aardvark Removals there, which must date back to the days of alphebitical printed listings. Having two A’s at the front of your name ensures you are the first in the list,
My favourites two are Movers Not Shakers and Exodus Removals & Transport. But I’m also a fan of United States based The Sultans Of Schlep!
I have written before about Lego’s remarkable comeback story, and how more recently they have adopted a crowdsourcing approach to developing new product ranges – Lego gets into bed with Dr Who. They have also spread their brand into the digital space over the years including Lego movies and television shows, and successful computer games such as Lego Batman which has been officially recognised as the best-selling superhero videogame of all time.
However, despite a previous attempt with Lego Universe in 2010 (which only lasted a couple of years), they have allowed Minecraft to become the monopoly player in the digital building block market place. Started by Markus Persson in 2009 it has grown to a user base of 70 million, and in September of 2014 was taken over by Microsoft in a $2.5 billion deal.
But now It turns out that Lego has not been idle during the spectacular growth of Minecraft and recently ‘soft-launched’ Lego Worlds on Steam for beta testing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbZuc5yX5ls
Lego Worlds is an open-world construction and exploration game in which every single element is constructed from digital Lego components. Players can change the existing worlds, or construct their own. Each landscape contains Lego vehicles, mini-figures and creatures (including the essential dragon), and are all based on real-life play-sets.
My step-son is a Lego fanatic in all of its incarnations, as well as being a keen Minecraft player. So after seeing a rave review from the influential Nerd Cubed on his YouTube channel, he was keen to buy a copy for the relatively modest cost of £11.99.
Once the download was complete he was in seventh heaven exploring the vast Lego worlds available on the system. I was amazed by the superb quality of the graphics, with the tiniest details of the real-world Lego pieces recreated on the screen. In addition to being able to travel around the virtual worlds either on foot or by climbing on board available transport such as motorbikes and horses, it was possible to recreate entire models using a ‘magic’ wand. So a helicopter or house could be conjured up within seconds and put to use.
This virtual Lego world contained the by now traditional elements seen in Minecraft of the ability to mine and build, whilst having to fight off scary monsters in the shape of Lego skeletons. But it had the added attraction of the full set of models carried over from the real-world available to build and adapt.
The beta test is due to continue until early 2016, and it will be fascinating to see how successful this game will become once fully launched into the market.
