Daily Management Review

What’s in a Name in Business - Apparently a Lot


08/12/2015




What’s in a Name in Business - Apparently a Lot
Google announced a change in its name, or at least a change in the name of the parent company through the formation of a new company – Alphabet.

While the aim is to stream line the profit making and the not so profit making businesses of the group, many see similarities to changes in the name of companies that later turned out to be trend setters in their fields. As uncanny as it may seem, re-naming prompted a big jump in the company’s stock.

Here is a list of the …. Major name change in modern business and many of the well known names are not the same as they started out to be.

First to start off, Google was not the original name of the company that rocked the internet search market. It started off with the name of BackRub in 1996. A year later the name was changed to Google by founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

BlackBerry was known as Research In Motion when the company started off keeping the name for as late as 2013 when the company name was changed to what it is now. Many analysts say that the name of the company should have been changed earlier which might have brought some good fortune to change the condition of the company that it now faces.
 
Best Buy was not the name of the company that it started out with. It was better known as Sound of Music which was founded by Richard Shulze in St. Paul Minnesota in 1966. The company initiated an IPO in 1969 after it reached $1 million in revenue in its first year. Best Buy was formally name given to the company in 1983.
 
One of the most valued and well known companies in the modern business, Apple Inc. was not the name of the company when it was founded by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak in 1976. The founders had named the company Apple Computer as it was engaged in the manufacture of PCs. The word ‘computer’ was removed from the name in 2007 after the company started making portable music players (the iPod), smartphones (iPhone) and other products.
 
It cost Nissan millions of dollars to convert the name of its American car company from Dustan. Dustan was the name given to the American wing of the company and after the phenomenal success of the cars, the parent company wanted to take all the credit and thus the change in name of all Dustan cars and the company.
 
When Quantum Computer Services started it internet services, no special name was assigned to it. However the company changed name to America Online after the company parted ways with Apple Inc. in 1989 and the rest is history.
 
Marafuku Company was launched as a card game company back in 1889. However in 1951 the company name was changed to Nintendo Playing Card Company (and as the company expanded its products, it dropped the “playing cards” and became Nintendo in 1963.
 
Coinstar was the name of the company that put up kiosks which counted coins and gave dollars instead. As the company grew and launched DVD rental kiosks, owners felt that the name was not fit enough and in 2013 the name was changed to Outerwall along with its trading symbol to OUTR.
 
Nike, one of the two most well known sportswear and sports equipment manufacturer, had started out its journey as Blue Ribbon Sports as a shoe distributor for Onitsuka Tiger in 1964. The company changed to the now iconic name in 1971. 

(Source: www.forbes.com)