It was called GLACE before it was GOBA

When I started this back in January, it was not called GOBA. It was called GLACE.

G-L-A-C-E. A play on glacier. Cold and rugged, like the Yeti and Arctic vibe I was into at the time. I filed the paperwork, got the LLC, bought the domain. I thought I had it. I did not have it.

The first thing I ever designed was not even a bottle. It was a hand-crank water purifier you could carry anywhere with no power. I thought it was going to change the world. Then I found out a prototype ran nine to twelve months and somewhere between 250 and 450 thousand dollars. For one prototype. I put it in a drawer. Still have the designs.

Then I designed a ring that screwed onto any bottle and tracked your water. LED screen, pH levels, UV light, the works. Loved it. Same problem. Too much tech in too small a space, too expensive to make. In the drawer it went too.

So I had a name I liked and no real product. Then the name fell apart on me.

Turns out a brand needs to be clean. No trademark fights, no patent problems. I went through hundreds of names. Spent five to ten grand just having my attorney run them and come back with no, no, you will get sued. The most frustrating stretch of this whole thing was not the factory. It was trying to name the company.

I even settled on Woodpecker for about two weeks. Changed the whole business plan over to it. Then found out another bottle company already had it. Garbage. Back to nothing.

Here is how it actually got fixed. I was driving one day and it just landed. GOBA. Go Build Anything. Told my wife, told a few friends, everybody loved it. It works for a contractor. It works for a family. It works for anything I want to build later. My attorney ran it and it came back completely clean. I trademarked it that day.

Five or six weeks with no name almost broke me. Then it showed up in the truck out of nowhere. That is usually how it goes.

- Tom