# how does it effect "having a trademark , logo and slogan)



## 1st striker (Sep 21, 2010)

i am about to start my own business in selling t-shirts and stuff and i wondered would it be better to start with a trademark and a logo and those stuff or it may be a waste of time!!!

A friend told me just make some shirts and sell another told me u have to got a name for your shirts for future propaganda but i think that my t-shirt quality will not be that good so i dont know

also i tried to make a name and a logo then most of my friends told me it is a childish name and logo but i thought it was simple and perfect so what type of name and logo that will do for like all my future expected work??


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## binki (Jul 16, 2006)

I think you need to brand your company. We have done it and it has really paid off. Forget about your friends unless they are Bill Gates, Warren Buffett or Steve Jobs.


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## Mitch Howard (May 2, 2011)

Branding is key. You always want to try to stick your brand in the customers heads. Without a logo, brand, or slogan you look very unprofessional. 

Without examples we can't help you as far as your logo/slogan goes. One hint though, you want a professional looking logo/brand. Not something that looks like it was designed in MS Paint. Even if that means hiring a designer...do it. As far as the slogan goes, That's not as important as a brand/logo, but if you do have a slogan try to come up with something catchy, funny, easy to remember.


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## pursueyou (May 16, 2011)

The other posts are right on! Branding is key is you want to entice people to purchase your t-shirts. With that said it is important to protect you brand name/logo. Check out legal zoom for trademark service-extremely cheap and easy.

I just met with the CEO of a very reputable brand last week to get some advice on my line and he reinforced the importance of branding. Beyond that he brought up 2 additional things that you may want to think about:
1. Including some sort of identifiable mark-for example when he started his surf line all of the board shorts featured a black patch on the back of the leg. He then passed out the shorts to all the surfers at the best breaks-when the kids on the beach saw them in the water all they noticed was the black patch. They would then go into a retail store and say "I want the shorts with the black patch" they had no idea about the name or the brand. A good example of this is the stitching on True Religion jeans-it is always recognizable. 
2. The power of a 4 letter name-I never noticed until he mentioned it but there are many brands that have 4 letters for a name and there is a psychological reason why. Some examples are Roxy, RVCA, FUBU, OBEY, ECKO...ect. 
All of this was new to me and we are trying to implement some of it into our current line pursueyou. 

Additionally, if you do file for a trademark make sure to be timely on your statement of use-I procrastinated and ended up having to redo it.

Hope this helps


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## nperoni (Aug 12, 2010)

ahmed, i was in the same position. i have original designs that i don't want copied, so i thought i should trademark my company name and logo to protect myself. then i saw how much it costs and what a process it is to do that, and i had to weigh the pros and cons of paying for a trademark. in the end, i decided not to and my thinking was because i feel like it's really not necessary at this point. just being realistic with myself, i realized that as a start-up nobody knows who i am and nobody is really going to pay attention to what i'm doing unless it starts to take off. people want to rip-off jumpman or gucci because it's a household name brand, but whose gonna want to rip-off exxodus (my brand)? so in an effort to keep my start-up costs as low as possible and to allow myself more money for shirts, i decided that the cost of a trademark just wasn't worth it right now. of course, i hope to one day be big enough that it is necessary to protect myself with a trademark. and at this point, now that my company is a legitimate LLC it wouldn't be hard to take that step when i want to.
plus, all created materials have a general protection under this country's trademark, copyright, and intellectual property laws. and i just paste on my website that everything is copyrighted and trademarked anyway. 
so that's my two cents.. maybe it offers a little perspective, maybe not. and my friends were dobtful of the name i chose for my company at first too, now everyone loves it. sometimes things just need to catch on. always listen to criticism with an open mind, but in the end you have to go with what feels right to you. otherwise it's gonna be hard for you to stake everything you have and are on an idea and brand that's not 100% you.


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## RinaRich (Apr 24, 2011)

Like many said, "Branding" is the key for your success to this business already.
Think about..
- What if your customer liked your brand and they want to find more of your stuff?
- What if your idea and design is cool and somebody steel it from you? and there is no proof that was your original logo and design.

*You don't have to file your logo right away because as long as you have your sold receipt that is older than others if somebody took your design, you can win the case.*
*(People file trademark and logo to "prevent" from that event.)*

and if you need to make labels and hand tags for your items, check out www.ygdalabels.com.
I use them all the time! they are on time of my due dates.


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## ishredbanez (May 14, 2011)

RinaRich said:


> Like many said, "Branding" is the key for your success to this business already.
> Think about..
> - What if your customer liked your brand and they want to find more of your stuff?
> - What if your idea and design is cool and somebody steel it from you? and there is no proof that was your original logo and design.
> ...


What type of receipt? My brand was started in March '09 but died after a couple months, and we are now bringing it back.
Our MySpace/BigCartel is still up if that counts but ehh..
Still have an e-mail with a .doc file of how many shirts we wanted and a PDF of the design (to be printed)...
We don't really have sale invoices/receipts... Most of our business was done in person. As I was mentioning, I could pull up the old BigCartel site...


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## RinaRich (Apr 24, 2011)

I'm not an expert of legal or anything but here's what I know:

As far as artwork and design, e-mail would work because those would have date in the mail.

When you actually sell your items to other individuals, you will always record (so you can file them), if you don't have receipts or invoices, you can use accounting record like ledger. 
That may not have your product detail info but if you can say this was your original items somehow, that would help you.

As long as you can show others that you created first and sold them first, it is your proof.

I hope that would help, but again, I'm not in legal or anything, so those always be in a gray area.


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## victoriasue (Apr 28, 2013)

In fact, everything is not difficult, as long as there is a good direction, selling clothes on the web is a very simple thing, I stumbled upon search the shop *True Religion brand jeans* , very good


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