BrandingWire has been quiescent for a while. For those of you not familiar with BrandingWire, it’s a joint venture of a number of bloggers, commenting on various branding challenges presented to us by our “studio audience.”

Originally, the BrandingWire posse took on one branding challenge per month, but we found that our readership was not expanding into the realms we hoped for, and that a clear business purpose wasn’t being fulfilled. Nonetheless, the BW concept is a valuable one, and we’ve remained open to taking on the occasional challenge.

And so, now we have one, via a contact of Martin Jelsema (one of the original BrandingWire posse members). Here is the business need; all original BW members are welcome to post their responses and advice, AND any other branding bloggers who wish to post some input on their blogs can also participate (see below for details).

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The challenge (and this, btw, is an excellent overview/brief format):

I’m looking for a business name, tagline, and logo.

DESCRIPTION
I will offer bookkeeping services to online retailers.

UNIQUENESS
My niche is online retailers.
I offer relief for the e-tailer by removing the burden of financial anxiety.
I can increase cash flow to the e-tailer by managing their money.

TARGET MARKET
Online retailers/ e-tailers/ ecommerce store owners
Sole proprieters
Running their own independent sites – not on eBay, Amazon, or Squidoo for example
Both startups and established businesses

MARKET SEGMENTS
Startup e-tailers
Established e-tailers
Sole proprietors
“S” Corporations
LLCs

MAJOR GOAL
Fifteen clients at $30 per hour averaging 8 hours per month per client, equals $3,600 gross earnings. First, this will allow me to work from home. Second, this will allow for a 30 hour work week, which will leave me the time I need to get my own online retail store up and running.

BRAND OWNER
I am married for 8 years, no children, and ambitiously desire to leave my current job as a computer drafter at an engineering firm to run my own online retail store. In order to start my store off on the right foot and guarantee (as best one can) success, I am detouring into bookkeeping for other online retailers. My plan is to learn the business from them, inside and out, by managing their finances. Over the next two weeks (June 28-July 9, 2008)  I will be taking a crash course in bookkeeping for small businesses. By August 1st I plan to have three clients, and add one new client per week until I have 15 total clients. So, by Thanksgiving week I will have 15 clients and will be able to leave my job in time for Christmas.

CONSIDERED BUSINESS NAMES
Ebundance
Abundance Bookkeeping
Flowbundance
Probundance
Accounts Doable
Special Ledger
Accounting Assets
Essets

CONSIDERED TAGLINES
*(note: online retailer, e-tailer, and ecommerce store owner may be interchanged)
Accounting for the online retailer
Carrying the online retailer’s accounting burden
Relief from accounting
Relief for the online retailer
Relax, I’m your CFO.
Relax, I’m your bookkeeper
Profit and growth specialist for online retailers
I wear the accounting hat.
Relax. I know what to do.
You make the money. I’ll track it.
I’ll do the “gross” work. (Accounts Doable)
Doing the “gross” work for the online retailer (Accounts Doable)
Making a statement for online retailers
Knowing what to do for the online retailer (Accounts Doable)
Ecommerce profit through bookkeeping
Profit through bookkeeping for online retailers
Anxiety management for online retailers
Helping online retailers plan and manage cash flow (Martin’s idea)
Helping online retailers manage their cash flow so they can survive the first five years (Martin’s idea)
You have more than you know

LOGO IDEAS
Pinecone (you have more than you know)
Iceberg, showing above and below waterline (you have more than you know)
Bean or Jelly Bean (I’m a “bean counter”
Hat (as in, I wear the accounting hat)
Coin (not really a coin, but a reference to a coin shape)
Pill (like a two color capsule, for getting rid of anxiety)

COLOR IDEAS
Deloitte blue
Green to match that blue

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OK, pondering this outline – what are your questions related to this potential brand? Your suggestions and advice? Your creative ideas?

Write up a post on your blog, and leave a comment on this post with the URL (you may want to use tinyurl.com and is.gd or similar in order to shrink the URL before posting). If you are a member of the BrandingWire posse, your post will be pre-approved. If your are a branding/marketing blogger and you’d like to join in the fun (and show your creativity), we’ll give your post a look first to make sure we’re providing value before approving the comment. Self-promotional SPAM will be filtered out, of course, but thoughtful and helpful posts will be featured. See prior BrandingWire challenges on this site to get an idea of how we comment on these challenges.

It’s summer – let’s fire up the Wire again and see what we come up with!