What’s In the Name?

Some people have asked me, where did you come up with the name A-Laser?  That’s a good question, as it doesn’t sound great.  What was worse was when people asked me about the name Florida Cirtech.  The problem with this name was that we weren’t even in Florida.  I guess my ability to name companies isn’t the best. 

Thirty years ago we weren’t so worried about this sort of thing.  We would develop a product, hopefully better than the name, and go out and sell.  But the world is changing and now sales is less important.  Today we talk about branding, SEO, followers, etc… and all I can think is that this world is passing me by. 

So how did we name companies?  Florida Cirtech came from my starting with Circuit Chemistries.  This name was taken so we took it a step further and tried Circuit Technology.  This didn’t fit our business as well since it might infer that we were building circuit boards but seemed logical at the time.  This name was also taken.  Next step, Cirtech.  We shortened the name which makes sense and I felt good about this but of course Cirtech was taken.  I started to talk with our attorney and he suggested putting Florida in front of the name since that was where I lived at the time.  Florida Cirtech stuck but it goes to show you that I didn’t have much foresight,  nor did my attorney.  Today I refer to Florida Cirtech as FCT.  Simple, clean and short, but in the old days people didn’t have names like this.

For A-Laser, the name started when we acquired a company that made stencils in Oregon named A-Laser.  We already had started branding Fineline Stencil but this company had a few customers that were buying services to cut precision parts.  I started to think that this might be an area that could grow since parts kept on getting smaller and smaller and thus we kept the name for our precision parts business.  But why A-Laser?  Let’s face it, not the best name.  The reason is pretty simple for anyone that is 50 years or older.  Back twenty years ago we had a book called the yellow pages, where you could look up and find companies if you needed something.  Putting A in front of laser allowed A-laser to come up first in the search for laser companies.  I don’t think this had any benefit to their business and I know it didn’t help ours but we went with it.

What is the lesson in all of this?  Spend more time when picking a name.  Today, I’d like to think we do a better job but in truth we have the following companies:

FCT Solder
FCTA Mexico
FCT Recovery
FCT Water
BlueRing Stencil
BlueRing Machining
DuraSlic
NanoSlic

Maybe it’s back to the drawing board for me.  Get ready as we just might be changing the name of A-Laser in the near future so if you have any ideas send them my way.  For now, I like the sound of Aerocel instead of A-Laser but not sure if I’m going down another rabbit hole!!