Name Debacle: Should I change my brand?

[blackie.sage]

A little over a year ago I decided to go with "Dear My Love" as my shop and blog name. I chose it because I love the song of the same title by Miyavi, and because I thought it sounded cute, but not sickly cute. I make Japanese fashion inspired jewelry and am working on my own line of skirts and JSKs. Sweet lolita, fairy kei, decora... that kind of stuff.

A little over two weeks ago I officially opened my shop on Storenvy after a year of "eh" sales on Etsy... and have been promoting the hell out of it. Every day I'm posting a different product on tumblr and linking back, I've been uploading new stuff on my DeviantArt and linking to my store, I've been pinning business cards on community boards around town... I've just been really happy with it all. I love the name, I love my logo, I just love it.

It recently came to my attention, simply just from browsing Tumblr, that a company that makes lolita/cutsey clothes in Japan has the same name... they even use a heart for the O in Love like I used to in the first version of my logo. They're not big, and it's hard to find a way to buy from them... but they're there.

I did actually do a fair amount of looking around before I chose the name to make sure there were no other etsy/storenvy shops or active blogs with the same name, and somehow I just completely missed this brand in my searches.

Part of me doesn't want to change my name after all the work I've put into all this, and I feel super dumb changing everything mere weeks after opening... and part of me is insanely guilty for not changing my name immediately upon discovery of this more established brand.

I don't want customers to think I'm mooching off of original Dear My Love's name, since they're geared towards the same people I am... But then I google "dear my love" and "dear my love clothing" and my blog and shop still appear on Google's first page of results.

I'm really at a loss of what to do. The morally correct thing to do would be to change the name, right? But I don't even know where to start. I guess it's good I caught it now while I don't have a ton of people knowing me by this name... but at the same time, it seems stupid to be like "Hahaha guys, just kidding. That's not my name!".

Help? Point me in some sort of direction?

[Alexus1325]

My first thought is "ARE they the longer established brand?" Is it possible they've taken YOUR store name because they figured, hey, they're in Japan, you're "overseas?" And, regardless of order of establishment, it could just be a fluke due to love of a certain song.

To the best of my knowledge, it's expensive, but the easiest way to protect your brand is to register it. Unfortunately, I know practically zip about doing so, making me not terribly useful on that front

You could also include a little blurb on your storefront page about the year you established your business. "Crafting Cuteness since 2003," or some such.

Also, I just spent some time cruising Google.jp, searching in Japanese for Dear My Love, Dear My Love clothing, and Dear My Love skirt, and came up empty handed. All I found were references to Miyavi, and random stuff. How did YOU find them??? And if it's a young woman cranking out a couple custom garments a month, I wouldn't worry about it. The likelihood of you and them coming into conflict in that case is quite small.

So, yeah, my thoughts as a consumer and crafter are to cover your butt where you can and then put it behind you.

[CraftyChef]

I couldn't find anything on them, either, but it looks like you've already changed your name, so stick with the new one and move on.