NSW man Daniel Slattery built a thriving excavation business – until a brutal letter stopped him in his tracks, costing a small fortune.
A Sydney tradie has opened up about the “devastating” mistake that cost his business a staggering $15,000.
In 2020 – just as Covid was making its way to Australian shores – Daniel Slattery received a letter which would lead to many sleepless nights – and crush his thriving business.
At the time, he was running a successful excavation company by the name of Olympus Corporation in the city’s west.
But the cease-and-desist letter revealed another company – a large, global technology and camera firm – had already been operating under the same name, and that Mr Slattery had unintentionally breached federal law.
The letter stated that if he continued using the name, Mr Slattery would be taken to federal court.
With little knowledge of intellectual property law, Mr Slattery hired a trademark lawyer and branding specialist.
He signed a statutory declaration agreeing to change his business name, allowing Olympus Corporation to drop the threat.
“After the charges were dropped, I rebranded the company to Orizonta,” Mr Slattery said.
“It took a long time for me and my team to find the right name. We went through 50 different options but most were already taken.
“The process took around four months and cost us $15,000, not to mention the hassle, time and cost of implementing the new name.”
He told news.com.au the impact of Covid coupled with the stress of the breach had been “awful”.
“I had no idea what a trademark was at the time. I rang my wife when I first got the letter and said, ‘what’s going on? Am I going to lose the business?’ I had no idea how big it was,” he said.
“I was speechless for a couple days and had many sleepless nights. It was devastating.”
Mr Slattery said a great deal of work was required to guide existing clients through the change, and revealed he had even lost some customers in the process.
“It took a toll,” he said.
“My advice to other business owners is to do your research and learn about trademark before you jump in – this has been a pretty big lesson.”
Mr Slattery’s story is all too familiar to brand strategist Delia Suteja, who had her own brush with trademark issues when she was just 20 after launching her first business.
At the time, she experienced a domain company squatting on her domain names, which then tried to sell her her own business name for a “crazy amount of dollars”.
The stressful situation inspired Ms Suteja to learn about trademarking, and today she and her business partners have launched BrandRead.i.y, an online service that instantly searches the availability of names across the web, social media platforms, Australian IP and ABN databases to help business owners before they land in hot water.
“I started to understand the whole power of having a trademark from that ordeal,” she told news.com.au.
“Since then, I have helped a lot of small businesses … who have no idea what this thing is about.”
According to the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), 2021 recorded the highest number of businesses registered each month compared to any year in the previous decade.
Ms Suteja said naive business owners were potentially setting themselves up for severe stress and financial losses by not considering trademarks at the beginning of their business journey.
