The Importance of Your Etsy Shop Name

The importance of your Etsy shop name cannot be stressed enough.  So I learned the hard way last year when I was completing the online forms to start a new Etsy.com account.

I learned too late that the user name that I chose was also to be my shop name.  Of course, the name that I chose was a combination of letters and numbers that bore no resemblance to a vintage shop, whatsoever!

I set up the account.  I made my choices in my personal settings options and was ready to chose the shop name when I realized the incoherent user name was now my shop's name.  I thought I will just edit it.  Nothing doing. 

So, I went through the email process of contacting Etsy to deactivate the first shop.  Then, I was able to open a new account with the name for my shop.  This time I made certain that my account user name was also the name of my shop.

On October 9, 2010, Wilkes Vintage Finds was born.  At least, the Etsy account.  The shop did not list any items for sale until November 2010.  I was in need of a DBA (Doing Business As) certificate with my local county for an Internet shop.  I obtained the DBA near the end of October.  The cost here was $19 which included the cost for the notary republic.

I had needed to do some extensive research to ascertain if the name I wanted for my shop was already taken.  I found other names with Vintage and Wilkes but not together.  I also contacted the IRS regarding my business tax id number which I already had for Jeanne Armonk Enterprises.  I learned that the IRS said that I was too use the same ID number for the new business as well.  Both of my businesses are sole proprietorships. 

I will post more on naming your shop and opening a new Etsy account in my next blog post.