Etsy: Creating my unique shop name

Finally, the time has come to propel my art career forward. After researching many different art selling websites (I'll give you a comparison in a later blog post), I decided Etsy was the best option for me.

It took me a while to decide what exactly I wanted to sell, being a person full of ideas and ambition, I wanted to make and sell everything. In the end I decided to sell prints, which means I can sell multiple copies of an original piece, gaining more money and spending less.

I narrowed down all my ideas to what I was good at, surreal drawings and paintings and cartoon illustrations.
I read through a lot of blog posts on how to start up on Etsy, because I really wanted to do this right the first time. (help on this is coming soon)

After reading several articles, I found that an important feature that your shop needs to be successful is a brand. And that that brand should be everywhere. Branding starts with your shop name. Although this seems minor, it's actually a major part of selling success. I started out by writing out a bunch of names which I thought could work, brainstorming any idea which would work. I read that mainly shop names containing my name and/or what I'm selling e.g: the words surreal, paintings, prints were the better names. After all, a shop called Bead Fashions selling a vintage oil painting just wouldn't make sense. After I brainstormed, I then researched other shop names in Etsy within the category that I was selling in.

The shop names I initially came up with were....

ArtByMarwa
P&DArt
P&Dprints
MarwaCreations
SurrealPrints
MarwaPrints
BohemianArt
BohemianStudios
BohemianPrints
SurPri
StudioPrints
PrintStudios
ArtObsession
MRartStudio
PrintPallete
PaintingPrint

Then I searched again through Etsy's shop names and found many shop names with ArtBy(insert name) so that was a definite no, I wanted mine to be different. I then got rid of the chessy ones, so; ArtObsession, MRartStudio, PrintPallete, PaintingPrint, MarwaCreations.

Then I gave my mum the list, it's always good to have a second choice because names you like may not appeal to everyone else. She cringed at a few and we discussed others.

Overall, the names left were ...

P&Dprints

BohemianArt
BohemianStudios
BohemianPrints
PrintStudios

I liked the idea of the Bohemian stuff because I intended my work to be unique and different . I then researched shop names on Etsy with the word Bohemian in it, and there was only one, so I decided that was a good direction to go in. I then wanted to look at google searches, if someone typed out my shop name, would there be other similar companies, this cancelled out BohemianArt.

Overall I prefered BohemianStudios because it seemed professional, different and was definitely unique. I felt more comfortable with this name and thus my brand will now be called BohemianStudios.

See the next post for how I created a logo.