When we talk about outdoor clothing brands we would
normally talk about North Face, Patagonia, Mammut and Sherpa Adventure Gear
Kathmandu is an outdoor clothing brand originally from
Australia. It is a brand that has been putting their product in the
international market along with their other home brands like Mountain design,
Mainpeak and Wild Earth. They have certainly come a long way since 1987 and has
been selling their products like wildfire in New Zealand, UK and Australia
itself. They have over 100 distribution stores with more than 1500 team members
in the three countries today.
With more than 20 years of history, the brand has been
doing well. But even with such success in the international markets, I feel that it has failed to meet the right expectation
of trademark (the name). A trademark is something that symbolizes the brand,
which makes the brand what it is. The companies should really think
carefully about their brand name. With so many brands in the outdoor clothing
business across the globe, any new brand should be unique and should
differentiate themselves from other brands. And the name plays a big part.
And it’s not just in outdoor clothing business, but in everything. Recently, I found out about a thrash metal band from Argentina called “Nepal”. Even though the band is no longer together, they opened for giants like Kreator in 1994 and Megadeth in 1998. Obviously they seem to have done well in the past but I just can’t think of what connection they may have had with the name.
In Nepal, we can see this specially in education institution’s names. There is Liverpool international college, Chelsea InternationalAcademy and NASA to name just a few. Just a while back I got to see another institute called “Nirwana” in Baneshwor, Ktm. Obviously, they seem to be very inspired from the name “Nirvana”.
And with all this going on, it really feels as if people now-a-days just come up without thinking much. We can take examples of companies like Xerox, Chapstick, Ping Pong, Google and so on. If we think about it, they are some of the most unique names for a brand. They really came up with a creative and amazing names. In spite of all these, those companies still became the victim of generic names. Having seen this, known about this, why would you want to be a generic brand to begin with?
I just feel that a brand name is what a person perceives when he/she first hears about it. It is obvious that a company wants to be regarded positively in the market. So, the best way to go is to create a trademark that best reflects the firm's vision and creates a positive vibe of learning.
Author - Bnay Shrestha
A music enthusiast and Bachelors student
0 comments:
Post a Comment