Name the New Bookshop - The Result

We ran a competition asking people to come up with names for our new bookshop/toyshop in Brookmans Park. The winner getting £50 to spend in the new shop and also having the privilege of cutting the ribbon on the opening day.
We had around 300 entries (292 to be exact), and last night was the night we chose the winner.

This is a blogpost all about what happened.
Are you ready to read it?
Good.

The process of choosing the name involved pens, cider, shouting, excel spreadsheets, telephones, lager and brains.

I put all the names that had been entered onto a spreadsheet. This spreadsheet was sent to 6 trustworthy and honest people who were asked to mark the ones they liked.
From the information I got back, I was able to put together six separate sh... ohh blah blah blah.

I went to the pub with Tim. Also with us was Helen Wright, a reporter from the Welwyn and Hatfield Times.


Helen ponders

I was drinking Grolsch, Tim was drinking Adnams and Helen was drinking Coke with lots and lots of ice.
From the 300 odd suggestions we had got it down to about 70 by the time we'd finished our first pint.
It was important to be brutal in these early rounds.
Names that had fallen by the wayside included;

Argonauts
Book Me Up
Brain Boggling Books
Diney land
Follow the Yellow Book Road
Goblins and Goggly Eyes
Kiddos
Super Tastie Books and Toys
Word

We then moved on to round 2.
Spreadsheets featuring popular and not so popular choices were scrutinised.

Spreadsheets. Mmm

We each went through the less popular lists and chose names we thought were worthy of further contemplation. Toys and Tales got through to the later rounds, despite only getting two votes from the six people who chose. Also, I was very fond of The Cave of Wonders, so that was pushed through to the later stages.
I should mention at this point that there were six names that were always going to make the finals. These had been chosen by pretty much everyone we asked as worthy of consideration.
These names were;

Books on the Green
Bookshop on the Corner
Brookmans Bookshop
Brookmans Books
Little Green Bookshop
Small Green Bookshop

We had worked our way through another pint now and another swathe of names had been discarded.


Grolsch. £4.00 a pint !

Including;

Wobbly Books
Twice Told Tales
Toy Train
Toy Story
Book Bash
Bizzy Bee Books
Bookbrilliant

So we got to the final few.

I'd been tweeting a few things throughout the evening and here was a massive online support for The Little Green Bookshop.

 

Tim and I had to decide whether this was the right thing to do. It was a BIG decision. We discussed what would happen if we opened a third or a fourth shop. Would we call it the Medium Sized Green Bookshop, or the Gargantuan Green Bookshop? We decided that it had to go.

so now we were down to these.

Carp....

Tuffets
Bradmore Green Bookshop
Brookman's Books
Brookmark
Books in the Park
Brookman's Books

We were down to six.

This was tricky now. So I put on my magic hat.

Left handed contemplation.

There were too many Brooks and Books. And we also had still got a big soft spot for "Toys and Tales", even though it didn't make it through to the finals.

Crossings out and more booze left us with the final three names.

Tuffets
Brookmark
Brookman's Books

What a huge decision.
When we named the Big Green Bookshop, Tim inserted 3 pens into his face. Let's relive that magic.



spectacular

OK.
Here we go.
THE RESULT
Remember that we all liked "Toys and Tales"? This made a big difference.






Brookmark? NO





Brookmans Books?  NO





Our new shop will be called;
      

Tuffets

toys and tales

I know! It was a real outsider.It kept sneaking through each of the rounds. But here we are. We loved Toys and Tales, but never thought it had the full boof to be a name on its own.  

But Tuffets gave it the full boof.

 

Let us know what you think.

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