When I got into this business five years ago I had no expectations of traveling outside of Florida, so it made sense to call the company "Wild Images Florida". Now, I'm spending about a third of the year or more outside of the state, primarily in the Northeast coastal areas of South Jersey, Delaware, and Virginia.
Although I see a fair number of my existing customers who live up in those areas, my primary focus is to capture new customers who live up North, and the work I present up there increasingly reflects their local environments.
So I am contemplating a name change. My DBA (I'm a sole prop) is registered as "Wild Images Florida" in all states where I'm registered (FL, MD, VA, PA) and that's reflected on my website (www.wildimagesfla.com), my business card, and my print labels. My show banner (on the front of my tent) reads "Geoff Coe's Wild Images Florida" (last year, I added my name to the banner).
I have checked biz name registrations online, and "Wild Images" (and the associated domain names) are taken.
I can change the name on my tent banner to "Geoff Coe's Wild Images" easily enough. But I'm wondering about the rest of the changes I will need to make.
Has anyone done this with their business? Are there "gotchas" I need to be aware of?
Replies
I'll have to think about this one, Geoff. I do know if you change the name of your website that you start fresh with google. So maybe if you get a new domain name you should keep the old that will redirect to the new one. I belong to another community site where these questions are often pondered and the members help each other figure out the ramifications, clickmillionaires.com.
Thanks, Connie! I'll pay a visit.
I'm familiar with the redirect code, that's an easy one. I may want to keep operating in FL as I am now, and just use the "new name" (if I decide to pursue this) in the other states. In which case the current site would still be valid.