The British TV show The Apprentice is a wonderful series, full of valuable lessons for business people. Many of these lessons are delivered by Sir Alan Sugar in his blunt and irascible style. But in May 2006 Sir Alan got a lesson about domain names that I'm sure he'll never forget, and it was a salutary reminder for the rest of us too.
To business people in the online world, your web domain name is the most important asset. Get that right and everything follows. It's literally the foundation that you build the business on. First, do we like his name for our new company? Is this domain name available as a .com and a .co.uk? Second, is this company name available at Companies House? If we're in agreement then let's register the .com, the .co.uk and the company name immediately.
And these discussions about domain names and company names should only be held privately with people you trust and not publicised until everything has been set up.
So, going back to 2006 and The Apprentice. The British public and the news media has been following the trials and tribulations of the contestants for weeks. Around six or seven million people were watching the final which was won by the pretty blonde Michelle Dewberry. A smiling Sir Alan announced that she was to be the managing director of a brand new company which rejoiced in the rather splendid name of Xenon Green. This new venture was a division of Amstrad's existing Viglen PC business, and it would be doing some good environmental work too, recycling old computer equipment. Sir Alan proudly announced that this had never been done before.
An IT services technician who was watching did a quick check online and found to his astonishment that the domain name XenonGreen.com hadn't been bought. Neither had the domain name XenonGreen.co.uk to his further surprise. Domain names are relatively inexpensive to buy, so he bought them, just for fun.
Pretty soon the world knew about this, as viewers started to look for the website of this interesting new company and it wasn't there. Tech-savvy people like the fast-moving web designer were able to check whether the domain had been bought and found it belonged to an IT services firm which had no connection to Sir Alan's businesses.
It then transpired that in addition to the domain name fiasco, Sir Alan's people hadn't registered the Limited Company name or a trademark either. And Sir Alan's claim that recycling old computer equipment had never been done was met with a torrent of comments from firms who'd been doing this for years.
In the end, Xenon Green bought a hyphenated domain name, Xenon-Green.co.uk which is generally regarded as the poor cousin of the unhyphenated domain name.
So, as this story illustrates, when forming a new company, you should research the market, and when thinking of likely names you should definitely register the domain name once you've decided, and form a Limited Company before you publicise it. Otherwise other people may do so and cause you all kinds of problems.
