Darianna® Bridal & Tuxedo originally became involved with the Central Bucks Chamber of Commerce over 11 years ago when we opened our store.
We made so many wonderful connections and built a few very solid relationships. It has been very fulfilling.
With some hard work and a lot of luck, our sales activity was so intense that we were out of space in our original store within 6 months of opening.
Today is a special and different post on the Central Bucks Chamber of Commerce website for us.
We’d like to take the time to recognize two of our vendors that have helped us grow and manage our strategies over the years. Both are active Central Bucks Chamber members.
IQnection
We originally met Eric Jacobson when we joined the Central Bucks Chamber of Commerce. Eric is IQnection’s Business Growth Specialist. What struck us about Eric was his kindness, integrity and breadth of knowledge about digital marketing. As a start-up, we were not flush with cash. Our immediate success only made things harder. Anyone who knows about funding runaway sales and inventory would understand this. Eric was patient with us while we were building our business. At the time, our website was, how do I say this?: garbage. Very few people visited the website and most were from China and Russia, clearly not our primary markets.
Within a year or two, we hired IQnection to build us a real website. And we are glad we did. People who we didn’t even know us would tell us how beautiful and functional the website was. We loved it too.
In our beginning years, Eric was like the parent trying to give advice to a teenager on what may be better for us. For the record, Eric is more or less the same age as the founders of Darianna® Bridal & Tuxedo so there was no generational gap. We either didn’t understand what he was talking about or more likely thought we didn’t have time for it. Eleven plus years on, we have implemented many things that Eric advised us to do and ummm, he was correct! Our website is now truly recognized by the search engines and has more relevant traffic (read: NOT from China and Russia) than we could have ever dreamed of.
Recently, we hired IQnection to rebuild our website. Remember when we said we loved our original website that IQnection built? It served us well for about 10 years but we agreed it was time to update the look and feel. The new website is even more beautiful, and more functional. We know we have a ways to go to get the new site perfect, but we are well on our way.
For the new website, we have to thank Tammy Wilson, Amy Lewis, and Tom Robbins. And please do not let us forget Randi Lindsay for her expert work on SEO.
You are all amazing and it truly has made being a member of the Central Bucks Chamber of Commerce worth it. Thank you for what you have done for us!
IP Works Law
On to our next vendor, IP Works. Many years ago, on a cold January morning, we went to hear Catherine Cavella speak about trademarks and protecting your brand. Catherine is the founding partner of IP Works Law.
What we learned, to our surprise, was something we never thought about. What if we received a cease and desist letter from someone stating that they own the name Darianna® Bridal & Tuxedo? The thought of spending all those years building a brand and a name and then someone saying we cannot use it anymore was frightening. After all, Darianna® is the combination of our daughters’ names, Daria and Deanna. Both daughters work in the business and it’s a great, cohesive story about the origin and founding of our family business.
After running out of space in our original store, we had just spent an inordinate amount of money building a beautiful and large new store. The cost of having to replace our sign due to a trademark violation alone, would justify the cost of applying for a trademark.
So our reasoning for obtaining a registered trademark for our name was not for the sake of having a trademark. It was more the peace of mind that someone would not tell us that we can’t use our name anymore.
We pretty much immediately contacted Catherine and set up a meeting with her. There are many things to like about IP Works and Catherine. She is immensely knowledgeable about intellectual properly law, she is fair and reasonable and she truly looks out for your interests.
We were soon granted a trademark and could not have been happier with it.
We recently renewed our trademark and the process was just as smooth and easy as our original trademark application. We are clients for life.
We now can sleep well knowing that the risk of losing our name to a trademark violation is substantially reduced or eliminated altogether. We have IP Works Law to that for that.
We are thankful to Catherine Cavella, Brad Brown and the entire IP Works Law team!
Lean on the Chamber - You’ll Be Happy You Did
We encourage chamber members to consider searching out other chamber members as resources and suppliers. We have done this over the years and it has allowed us to fill our business needs with high quality and capable professionals.
Darianna® Bridal & Tuxedo and its founders are looking forward to many more years of Central Bucks Chamber of Commerce membership.
