Business ideas

So we are considering creating a business named Lolo Thai with domain lolothai.co.uk. As an example, what would you recommend for business name and branding in this hypothetical scenario:

- There is another restaurant with the name Lolo Restaurant and domain lolorestaurant.co.uk

- There's another business with the name Lolo's Thai and domain lolosthai.co.uk.

- And there's another business with the name Lolo Thai Restaurant and domain lolothai.com.

How would you adjust the business name and branding (online and offline) to compete and differentiate with those other businesses? Would you change the name to Lolo Thai Restaurant or Lolo Thai [Location] or Lolo Thai Restaurant [Location] for example?

Thank you!

 

I hope you guys are not going to sue each other once the competition heats up.

For a high end it could be: Lolo Thai Cuisine

What you mentioned sounds good to me Lolo Thai Restaurant (or maybe Lolo Thai Oriental Foods).

 

@qwikad.com brings up the most important point: one or more of these existing businesses might decide to engage your new business in court over trademark issues and that, alone, could divert significant financial resources into nonproductive areas (i.e., lawyers) and really hurt your business development efforts.

Adding the location, as you suggest above, may be a good option for differentiation and also for legal issues. Do you know where these other businesses are located? If none of them are within the buying region for your establishment, then there may be no issues whatsoever in terms of competition. On the other hand, if they are all within a few miles of each other, it could get nasty.

 

Usually you write up a business plan, plan how it's going to work, and find a name. Not buy a domain and then think what business it could be

 

For me Lolo Thai Restaurant sounds very good .Also to defeat the competition think on smart ways on how you can beat competition by delivering the great value amd coming with something new

 

As business owner, you don't want competition. Competition is good for the customers, not for the businesses. Check @PeterThiele 's Zero to One for reasons.
So if you can do something to avoid competition, you should do that.

 

I wouldn't want an exact business name like that of my competitors. Figure out ways to create something new. You don't have to use Lolo Thai. You can name it whatever you want, it can be totally different than Lolo Thai. I'd try to make it easy to remember, catchy phrase and ideally related to the type of business.

If there are 3 other companies with the exact name let them compete against each other with their Lolo Thai names, and you create something totally different and unique.