We’re too poor to be mean!

Everyone knows that times are hard right now, cash is tight and businesses are struggling to keep their doors open. So when a ‘consultant’ suggests spending money, often it is very easy to find reasons to say no. However when times are tight that’s exactly the time when we must remember to spend our money wisely, extract every cent’s value from our spend and remember that we are too poor to be mean.

Buying the cheapest often makes for false economy as cheap products will probably be unreliable or break and have to be replaced far sooner than the better product that cost a little more. Irish businesses need to be very careful that we don’t fall into this trap during recessionary times.

When it comes to intellectual property, one area that stands out is trade marks:

Brand recognition is priceless. If you are going to spend some money on brand design, you should always check to make sure you are free you use trade marks in advance of spending money on having the design work done. An availability search would normally cost in the region of €500 so it’s hardly expensive. Nevertheless I am frequently surprised when people refuse to have availability searches done, and instead rely on the hope that it is ok to use their logo. Very few people seem to realise that registering a company name at the CRO or the registering a domain name confers no rights whatsoever.

So what is the potential cost of failing to do a search and being told that you can not use a logo? We recently revamped our own image: updating our website www.cruickshank.ie, renewing and refresh our logo and the redesign of our fonts and letterheads on our correspondence. We printed fee brochures, file folders, compliments slips, and business cards. We also got new signage done internally and externally and we had a number of pop-up banners created.

As a relatively small company with approximately 25 people who do not use a lot of stationary, our orders were relatively minor. So it might come as a surprise to many that the entire work including the design and print but not including my time or the other partner’s time cost €36,000. That’s €36,000 I would have wasted if I were not free to use the trademark I had chosen. That’s forgetting about the fact that I would have to spent the guts of the €36,000 again coming up with another new logo and I don’t even want to think about cost of the damage to the firm’s reputation.
Spend wisely friends and remember we are too poor to be mean!!