Have you ever wondered why Donuts is called Donuts? Honestly, I hadn’t really thought about it all that much before, but I read an article about the company in The Seattle Times over the weekend, and the answer was given in the article.
When company co-founder and CEO Paul Stahura was asked why he chose the name Donuts for the brand instead of anything else, here’s what he had to say:
“Stahura decided the company name would start with “d” and its logo would be teal, a play off TLD. He looked through a dictionary and liked that Donuts has the letters “dns” (for “domain name system”) in it.”
A typical domain industry veteran may have chosen a brand name based on the availability of the matching domain name, but obviously that wasn’t necessary with Donuts. I believe the company first used the Donuts.CO domain name when it was launched because the new gTLD domain names were not available at that time.
The Seattle Times article is a short read with some information about Donuts. Aside from the genesis of its brand name, the article shared some information about the company’s expected growth next year.
I always wondered why they called the company Donuts. All I think of is Donuts. Yum!
I like the word Naming better, seeing they are in the naming business.
Naming.Domains also sounds better than Donuts.Domains
But what do I know, I just own Naming.Domains and Naming.Store
I’ve long thought of something I saw Mike Tyson say once regarding that, which I’ll get to in a moment.
Aside from the above, “Donuts” is a nice and fitting metaphor that works well, even if they did not intend that. Each TLD in that sense is a “donut,” potentially rather sweet, and each one is designed to “make donuts” for the registry.
Which brings me back to Mike Tyson. I saw a report about him on TV a while ago, before new TLDs, and when it came to what he was up to in order to make money lately then, he said something like “got to go make the donuts.”
Making dough from nuts.
Nice insights. Now that you mentioned it, I notice for the first time that the D N and S in the Donuts logo are the same color. With the background you shared, I suspect that is intentional. Good branding/logo story. 🙂
What? I’ve always liked the brand name Donuts … but not because it contains the letters “DNS”.
No, when I heard “Donuts” I heard an echo of the “do” in “Domain”. The main idea – what I assumed had been their conscious rationale – is delicious variety. When you buy a box of a dozen donuts, you get jam-filled, chocolate cake, apple fritters, powdered sugar, sprinkles.
Consumers don’t care if a brand name is an anagram for “NO STUD” or “DNS OUT”. Entrepreneurs and their private notions are surprising sometimes.
I thought it was clever from the first moment. I assumed it was short for DOmain Nuts.
It’s intending to stand for: Do Nuts (the suckers) buy these shite names from me!