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Building a successful business from home is hard work. It takes time and effort. And it’s a tough world out there - you need something to give you that edge over your competitors.

It helps to use a distinctive brand name. You will strengthen your marketing efforts and, at the same time, protect your business from competitors.

What is a brand name?

A brand name or trade mark is something unique to you that your customers use to tell your product or service apart from those of your competitors. Consider a standard 500g pack of butter: the product looks the same, the container looks the same, and only the brand name of ANCHOR, TARARUA or FERNLEAF tells you which is which.

You can brand your products or services in a myriad of ways. Distinctive colours (eg. BP’s green for service stations), sounds (eg. the Sunlight dishwashing liquid’s squeak), logos (eg. the BMW roundel) and names (eg. KODAK film, HERO clothing, OAK canned foods) are proven trade marks.

The trick is to choose a device that is both distinctive and conveys the right message to your target market . The more distinctive your brand or trade mark, the easier it will be for your customers to remember your product or service, and for you to fight off competitors and poachers.

How a strong brand helps:

Be sure to register your trade mark

Once you choose your brand, you can then register it as your trade mark at the Intellectual Property Office of New Zealand. Registration gives you the exclusive right to use that trade mark in relation to the goods or services that you specify at the time of making your application. This means that you - and only you - are allowed to use your trade mark in relation to those goods and services. Registration also gives you the right to stop others from using a confusingly similar trade mark in relation to the same or similar goods or services.

It is relatively simple to make a trade mark application. The government fee is only $100.00 plus GST per trade mark application per class. (Business owners can file their own trade mark applications but they should talk to a specialist trade mark lawyer first. A trade mark specialist ensures that the application proceeds as smoothly as possible, and has the best chance of success.)