FINN - Coming Up with A Company Name

This may seem like a weird topic for folks who know me. The long term goal is to build the company beyond my personal network and that’s the “target audience” for this entry. Not a very spicy topic here - my name is Finn and so is the brand, but I wanted to share a bit on how it came to that.

This was not my initial choice, when I was still just daydreaming of building my own box. I’d ask for input from anyone who’d listen to me jabber about this awesome idea I thought I had, ranging from Nordic Ski training partners to convo’s over drinks. I’d ask them if they had any cool names for an Alaskan gear company. The most common reply was Alaskan themed names which personally I really liked, the one hiccup was all the ones that struck me/weren’t already being used as a brand name were kind of long and I could see most folks from out of state totally butchering it, even some Alaskans. I have to admit when I first saw KUIU back in 2013 I had no idea how to pronounce it, I didn’t even know it was an island in Alaska. My initial desire for a brand name needed check the boxes for being simple, clean, and with minimal letters.

Since the beginning I had TUTE in mind - a play on “Utility” Totes. I thought that was so clever with how it related to what we were going to build. A heavy duty utility tote that’s better than anything offered out there at the moment. There’s a truckload of totes out there but they’re focused on catering to more what we consider static storage applications or very light duty and have a lower pricepoint, nothing wrong with that - they a have their purpose in the market, they just weren’t what I needed personally. I got all excited that there were all sorts of ways to get creative and play with the logo connecting the top portions of the T’s and E over the U etc, there seemed like lots of options to make a clean simple logo.

We were having dinner and drinks with my sister and her boyfriend discussing this whole deal and starting to get a little spooled up… Skyler jumped up all pumped and enthusiastically suggested just use my name! (such a simple concept). Initially I brushed it off with TUTE as my first choice for quite a while but remembered his suggestion. I did like there were options to do things with the triangles in the N’s - could turn those into trees, mtns or even shark fins - lots of options to get creative. It wasn’t until font trialing started between the two that I started leaning towards FINN, the angles in the N’s just made it look sharper and crisp I guess that’s the best way I can describe it. My old man’s Norwegian and I’ve always like Scandinavian type names which may have also influenced the final call. Obviously we know what I ended up going with in the end for the brand name, it fit what I was looking for - simple, short, crisp, and I do feel it’s somewhat memorable and leaves an impression. We didn’t drop TUTE to the curb though, that’s what we’re going to call the product line - TUTE’s made by the FINN!

One of my initial runs @ font trialing, trying to see which option I like better

There are SO many articles out there on the internet on how to brainstorm and strategize a brand name. It’s impressive how much time and effort someone can put into it or just shoot from the hip and sling one up and go with it. If you’re ever trying to name company I’d highly recommend at least reading 1 or 2, lots of good thinking points, but in the end It all comes down to personal preference and I may have mic’d this brick a little too much… Oh well not the end of the world. It’s kind of funny how it took me so long to decide on a brand name when I literally could’ve just gone with my name at the very beginning. Kind of an interesting sidenote: I did look into domains when I was still on the fence - tute.com was taken… but finn.com was available and for sale! In like 2021-ish, it got purchased and is for some type of global car rental company now. I was pretty bummed I missed out on it initially, but honestly that would’ve been some serious coin (guessing 5 figures) for a 4 letter .com domain. More than I can justify for an idea at the time I was still trying to figure out if it even penciled out or not.

Thanks for making it to the end, I feel bad there weren’t any Alaskan photos for this entry, so I’m going to include a pic taken out of the dirty window (apologies) a couple summer nights ago as we flew to the cabin. Kind of fun how the water contrasts to the land.

Catch you down the trail!