Saturday, April 9, 2016

Naming My Business And Making It Official

Today I worked on making my new craft business an actual business.  For tax purposes, that is.  I know its boring, but I wanted to do the start up of my micro-business right and that means giving it an official name.  

Here in Australia that means a couple of things. Firstly its a good idea to have an ABN (Australian Business Number).  Now, I know that my business will be teeny tiny, but really any person who is creative and thinks that they may contribute to a publication, take part in an exhibition or competition, or teach their craft at the local library will need an ABN so that whomever they may get paid by can be right from their tax point of view.

ABN's are free to establish for sole traders (ie people carrying on business in their own name) and only take a couple of minutes to set up.  This is done at the Australia Business Register. I ignored all the options like being a company because even though I may dream about having a team of people building giant insects for a display in Myers front windows the reality is it will be just e and won't be making te kind of cash that needs a 30c in the dollar tax rate. So sole trader it is.

I already have an ABN from having a previous business and also incidentally being part of exhibitions while studying ceramics at TAFE and entering competitions.

What I was lacking was registration of my business name. If you want to trade as just yourself (and you have an amazing name like Sweetpea Butterworth as your actual real name) then just the ABN is enough.  But if you want to trade as anything other then your name you need to register that name. Its not free but its not really expensive, it only take a few minutes and it could stop you facing a nasty fine if you get caught trading without a registered name for your business. 

So I registered myself as Crafty Bug Lady for a mere $34 in about 20 minutes. Go to the ASIC website to register rather than using one of those services that charge for this (honestly its easy).  

The ASIC site makes you check that the business name is not used by anyone else.  This can be helpful when you are coming up with a name for your business.  I also used the traditional approach of Googling the possible names I came up with to see whom else is using it and what images come up when you use Google Image. I also checked online craft sellers like Etsy and Madeit to see if anyone else is using the same name. I was originally going to call myself Crazy Bug Lady but after a check I found someone already using this as a blog title (her blog looks really good by the way and I will go there to learn much about insects).

After I was happy with a name I made sure I set up a blog in the name (your looking at it), an email address and I will have to go and set up some online sales sites sometime soon (once I have chosen which to use).

I chose "Crafty" over crazy in the name because it ties in with the crafting business plus I think it sounds like someone who can come up with cunning solutions to situations.

I chose "Bug" because lots of people use this word to capture all things insecty, crawly, alien and just a bit weird. Bug makes sense. 

And the "Lady" is obvious.  Otherwise I might have gone as "Bloke" instead!

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