Thursday, April 19, 2012

What's In A Name?

Domino Pads is kind of an odd name for a reusable menstrual pad, isn't it?
Why not choose a name that is more closely related to what the product is or does?
If this question has been keeping you up at night, here's your answer.

When I started making Domino Pads my main concern was creating a breathable, yet leak resistant pad. From cloth diapering my son I already knew I loved WindPro for that purpose.
However when I started ordering WindPro samples I quickly noticed that most were completely unsuitable for making pads. Sherpa pads anyone? Too thick, too fluffy, too textured.

I finally found the right weight and surface finish but the only color consistently produced in that version is BLACK. So all my pads would be lined with black WindPro.
Sure more colors would have been nice but in the end the wearer would be more likely to feel the pad than see it. Ultimately function won out over form.

Now I had to think of a simple way to distinguish my pads from other brands, find an easy to spell name and possibly a still available web domain that wasn't a mile long.

There were of course the obvious choices:
a name related in some way to womanhood, something catchy related to menstruation or perhaps be a little more direct and name it after bodyparts?

The thing is: I wanted everybody that could get use out of my pads to be able to enjoy them without feeling like the product was made for somebody else. Many of our customers use the pads for things other than menstruation (slight incontinence, discharge, etc.).
Because of this I purposefully avoided calling them Mama pads or anything similar. If somebody got good use out of my pads then it really didn't matter what age or sex they were: I wanted people to have a pad that made them feel like it was made for them.

Just around that time I also switched from metal snaps to plastic and noticed I could be much more specific about prong length in white snaps than any other color.

White snaps on black liners... kind of an odd combo. Some of you may be guessing by now where we are going with this:
The white, round dots on black background reminded me of Domino game pieces. The name was easy to remember, easy to spell and a domain in that name was still available.

I still every once in awhile get a request to disguise the return shipping address so that the mail carrier, delivering a package, wouldn't guess what's in a package from Domino Pads but overall, aren't you glad I didn't call them HappyHooHoo?

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