Shut Up And Listen 230

Call me weird, but I think names of stores matter. When I see a clever name or one that just fits, I feel happy and when I see a shitty name, I get pissed off. The worst sin when it comes to naming stores comes when you have two companies that have the same kind of store, they merge and then the shitty name is the one they decide to use simply because that was the bigger company. I probably wouldn't mind it too much, but it keeps happening.

Our first case study is of a Canadian store called Future Shop and an American store called Best Buy. Both stores sell CDs, DVDs, appliances, computers, and all sorts of electronics. At some point, the company behind Best Buy bought out the company behind Future Shop and decreed that while no Future Shop would be closed or changed, they would only open up Best Buys in Canada from that point on. Now, anyone can see that Future Shop is the better name as it actually suits what they sell: up-to-date technological stuff. Whereas, Best Buy is the kind of name you give some shitty dollar store or an outlet shop in that sleazy dirt mall at the edge of town. It's a case of "we bought you, so we must be better" idiocy rather than the powers that be seeing that one name is just better.

Our second case study is of two companies that sell building supplies, tools, gardening stuff, and everything else you'd find at a hardware store. One of the companies is called Rona and the other is called the Building Box. Now, if you weren't convinced that Future Shop is a better name for an electronics store than Best Buy, you have to admit that Building Box is a far superior name than Rona. I mean, with Building Box, you know exactly what you're going to be getting there if all you know is the name. Rona, on the other hand, sounds like a shitty seventies sitcom, not a place where you run to when you're going to be fixing up the old homestead.

Our third case study is of two bookstores: one named Chapters and the other named Indigo. Come on, do I even need to spell this one out for you?

And finally, we have the most recent happening of this fucked up phenomenon: Circuit City buys Radio Shack (or has owned it for a while and just decided to change its name, I don't know) and changes all of the Radio Shacks to stores called The Source. What the fuck? Everyone knows what Radio Shack is! It's fucking obvious! What the fuck is the Source anyways? I've always known the term the source to imply where my friends bought weed. It's too broad a name.

And that's the problem with most of these names: they're trying to create a brand with a name that doesn't accomplish what a name should do right away, which is tell you what you're going to get there. In each case that I've given you, there was a store with a name that suited what the store sold. You could look at the name and make an educated guess at what you'd find there. And in every case, the replacement name was broad and gave you no clue at what they would sell. Hell, I could have just mixed up the second names and you probably wouldn't have noticed unless you already knew what kind of store it was.

Obviously, this isn't a big deal or anything, but it's just one of those things that bothers me.