Anyone who regularly visits Queensland’s glorious Whitsunday’s, will know of a fantastic shop, with a great business name, in Proserpine called ‘Colour Me Crazy’. It’s a treasure trove of unusual gifts, jewelry, house wares, clothing and it stocks some of the weirdest, wackiest, delightful stuff ever!
We girls love it and think nothing of driving 110Kms to go for a browse.
Owner Robyn is passionate about her store and over the years has built up a strong clientele. She has a great logo, good branding, store front etc and she advertises regularly both locally and regionally in tourist magazines and on TV.
Then, 2 years ago, Robyn was confronted by someone telling her that they were going to open a similar store on the Gold Coast and call it ‘Colour Me Pink’ and hopefully ‘do as well’ as she was!
Fortuitously, that same week, I dropped into the store to get a wedding gift for a friend – yes – a 250 km round trip!
Whilst chatting with Robyn, I mentioned that we looked after trademarks and patents. She told me of her concerns about another person using her ‘idea’ for her business name as their business name. She was really upset about it!
Rightly so.
I knew what Robyn needed to do.
We immediately went ahead to trade mark her business name, “Colour Me Crazy’ and indeed managed to increase her protection by getting a trade mark just for the words ‘Colour Me’.
This means that anyone wanting to open a similar store with that name or similar… Colour Me Crackers, Colour Me Polka, Colour Me Anything, would be infringing on Robyn’s trademark and can be stopped.
“I’m quite relieved knowing that someone else can’t ride on the shirt tails of all my years of building my business & possibly even damaging my reputation just by negative association” said Robyn.
It’s good practice for business owners to trademark their name before they start trading, because just registering a business name is not adequate.
