Since one of the primary functions of our car business is detailing the cars on a daily & weekly basis, I’ve been thinking seriously about generating a new adjunct business, Auto Detailing.  Detailing is more than washing the family car. Rather it’s making the car show-room ready.

We’ve (Dylan and I) have learned a lot about detailing cars and taking care of them. I’m now looking at the function of “polishing” the paint, which is the task of removing swirls, scratches and other blemishes on a car. This is done prior to applying a top coat of wax or synthetic protection.

For the name, I’m kicking around just using the similar regional identifier, Altitude and adding “Detailing”. So, the name would simply be;  “Altitude Detailing”. Pretty easy and catchy. If/when we do any mobile work and/or pickup cars, I can still use my rental car delivery truck as it has the same logo and name.

Hopefully this will help augment the car rental business and give me some work to do through the winter. It seems like a perfect segway to go since we spend so much time on our fleet now. Plus, I already have the shop, the equipment and the supplies. So, there’s really no new expenses or additional over-head. In fact, this could help ease the current over-head costs.

Posted: August 26th, 2007 under Personal.
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Ever have one of those weeks? Well, we did last week. Turns out that a part of my business name is “TradMarked” on a national basis and I was sent a cease and desist letter by a law firm representing another Exotic Rental Car Company. So, we retained our own lawyer for advice and guidance.

Turns out, it may be more trouble to fight it even though the issue is “shaky” at best. Costs is the main issue for me as a startup, so we’ll look at modifying the name. At first I was thinking about changing the spelling just to “p-ss” them off, but it looked unprofessional and really, modifying the name isn’t that big of an issue.

My company name is “Altitude Dream Cars” and it’s simply a DBA under the LLC we formed. The issue is with the term “Dream Car”. Even though there are several other companies around the country using regional identifiers in the beginning and using “Dream Cars” as part of the name, it’s still a trade mark infringement. Fortunately, the term, Altitude is not in question and it’s the predominant word and image in my logo and brand.

I was thinking about just changing it to: “Altitude Dreme Kars” because words and spelling was the issue and technically, they couldn’t touch this one. But, it looks so unprofessional, that it’s not going to happen. So, now I’m thinking about these possibilities.

• Altitude Specialty Cars
• Altitude Specialty Rental Cars
• Altitude Specialty Car Rentals
• Altitude Exotic Cars
• Altitude Exotic Car Rentals
• Altitude Exotic Rental Cars

We’ll see how the next review and search of these goes. We’ll soon be one of the above names after my legal council researches the names and we get it trade marked ourself.

Shane

Posted: August 15th, 2007 under Personal.
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