Choosing a business name feels like such an important step, but in all reality, you just have to have something. I’ve looked up advice on this over the years and some “experts” have strong feelings about a business name and how many business owners choose silly ones…like “Funky Burrito” or something ridiculous.
Some people say it needs to clearly explain what you do, while others swear it needs to be short. Finally, I came across somone saying “you just need a name, any name…you can change it later if it sucks.” and for some reason, that resonated with me! It reduced the starting hurdle and I moved forward. Here is my background story on the name…
I’ve always been one to put extra sprinkles on things.
Becuase why not!? They are one of the lightest add ons at the froyo shop, don’t distort flavor much, and add pizazz up the wahzoo. Oh and if you can find the extruded ones that are more crunchy and less waxy, then you are in for a REAL treat!
But was I about to call my super scientific technical development lab “Sprinkle” or “Sprinkle Labs LLC”, or “Just add Sprinkles”. Um…hard pass. It is already tough enough being a female in a male dominated engineering, manufacturing, and business world. I’m not here to be “cute”. I didn’t want to invite any more attention that I already do to being female and relatively young, so my business needed to stand out on it’s own and be gender neutral. Don’t worry, I’ll still wear my pink pants when we meet in person to talk about production rates.
So “Sprinkle” anything was OUT. But I still really wanted something that tied into the fun, color, and comfort that sprinkles provide.
Then my dad got a new puppy. (I swear this comes back around, please keep reading) He’s had golden retrievers as hunting dogs ever since I’ve ever existed, and long before. He would train them to hunt pheasants, quail, doves, etc. and my sister and I would train them to jump through hoola hoops and balance biscuits on their noses. Well rounded pups if you ask me!
But there was always a debate with a new puppy when deciding on a name. Dad had VERY CLEAR parameters from the start:
Their name had to have a hard consonant. Like a harsh T, K, or P. For example: Tucker, Parker, Rootie, Buck, Toxey, Tori…or…Wizzy? She must have snuck through when we were supposed to keep a puppy named Star.
Their name had to be short and sharp so that they can easily hear it, rocognize it, and remember it early on.
So….if that works for dogs, I don’t see why such a simple theory wouldn’t work for humans. Enter: Sprink. A subtle nod to sprinkles but without the feminine flair. Could be a masculine underground sprinkler company if you didn’t know any better. But short, sharp, and leading enough to make you wonder if it is sprinklers or sprinkles.
I loved it. Tested it on a few friends and they loved it. Clearly they KNEW my love of sprinkles and found it clever (thanks friends).
However, www.sprink.com was not available as a domain name. I didn’t really want to change my domain or add more to it beyond my company name. Again, I wanted it to be simple to come across and remember. But sprink.com wasn’t just not available, it wasn’t even for sale at the time because it was owned by Sprint. Ya know…just in case you slip and hit a ‘K’ instead of a ‘T’ ?? I wasn’t about to battle a major telecommunication company for a domain name, so I added another K and searched again. Lo’ and behold, I could buy www.sprinkk.com for $8 with zero resistance. EIGHT dollars! Done.
Sprink is now Sprinkk and I’ve never looked back.
That token second K became my logo, a sprinkle K if you will. It somehow hardens that consonant more, and further sets it apart from rainbow-sprinkle-cutesy business while providing a spunky flair of its own.
So yeah, you just have to have a name to get things started, and you can change it later if it sucks, but I’ve grown pretty fond of Sprinkk as a name around here.
FYI…It would also make a fabulous hunting dog’s name.
Sweet Fact:
Not all sprinkles are the same! You can find sprinkles in the form of colored sugar, wax coated rainbow jimmies, nonpareils, stamped shapes, and more. There are a ton of different names for them as well depending on where you live.
On a very basic level, the most common sprinkles are a thin extrusion of sugar/corn syrup/starch that is is broken into pieces and then panned (coated) with color and sealed with a wax. The crunchy ones that I love are extruded with color in them and then they don’t get coated in heavy wax.
I you like to add colored sugar to your baked goods to add a bit of sparkle in your sprinkle, you can find colored sugar in the cake decorating aisle. OR you can easily color your own sugar with a little bit of food coloring and granulated sugar (look for Con AA if you want bigger crystals…available on Amazon. Sugar in the Raw might work as well with it’s larger crystal size.) Just put your sugar in a zip-top bag, add a couple of drops of food coloring…just not so much that the moisture dissolves the sugar, and shake it up until everything is coated!