The Story Behind the Orange Star Name

Yesterday I shared some tips for naming a business, product, or service. Several replied asking what inspired my business name Orange Star Design, so here’s my story.

In 1993 I incorporated my business as Jodi E. Hersh Graphic Design & Photography, Inc. Catchy, ey? 🤪

Needless to say, it was unique, relevant, and no one else was using it. The main problem aside from being a mouthful was on forms that had the little squares for each letter — there were never enough boxes!  ⃞⃞⃞

In 1995 when first registering my first domain name, they were more expensive than they are now. Both Jodi and Hersh are constantly misspelled and registering all the variations of jodihersh.com would have been costly and more complicated.

I was wracking my brain to come up with something clever that would be easy to say and spell over the phone, AND that was available to register. I was up late and literally eating Lucky Charms cereal at the time. Gen-Xers like me may remember the classic commercial: ORANGE STARS, yellow moons, green clovers… orangestar.com was available so I grabbed it. It is memorable, easy to spell and pronounce, AND Magically delicious. 😋

At the time, I hadn’t even considered changing the business name. For years I was still JEHGDP while using jodi@orangestar.com and orangestar.com. I didn’t care. It didn’t seem to matter. If anything, it stirred conversations.

In 2000 someone contacted me to purchase the domain from me and I discovered how attached to it I had become.  I sent a cease and desist, officially changed my business name, and trademarked it. I’m glad I did. 🍊⭐️

Alrighty, time for breakfast!