A few months ago as I came outside the Four Seasons Hotel on George Street in Sydney, a hair-dressing saloon caught my eye as it had the words TRUMP written over the saloon. It was a nicely decorated saloon on George Street next to the hotel and was filled with men and women getting their hair done. One interesting observation I made was that there were hundreds of hair saloons on and around
George Street but this saloon was defiantly the most vibrant and filled with people at any given time.
Obviously the name TRUMP rang a few bells and automatically I started believing that this business was part of the empire of the celebrity billionaire Donald Trump whom I have admired for many years, as I’m sure you have too.
I couldn’t help myself and I went straight into the saloon where I was greeted with professionalism and despite my efforts of booking an appointment I was told that the saloon was booked for another 3 days so I made an appointment for a hair cut in a week’s time and I was handed a slick business card with the details of the appointment. A week later I did attend my hair appointment where I felt treated like royalty and the hair stylist gave me one of the best haircuts I have ever received (no exaggerations).
Over the last 4 months I have visited the TRUMPS hair saloon once a month and it was only yesterday when I found out that this saloon was not part of Donald Trump’s empire and infact it is owned and managed by a local Sydney lady who had simply leveraged off an already established brand name to achieve a level of success with her saloon. With the exceptional level of customer service and an already established brand name, the TRUMPS Hair Saloon has become one of Sydney’s most succesful small businesses winning various awards including the 2005 City of Sydney Business Award and the Small Business Champions award.
The success of TRUMPS made me think of other such small to medium businesses that have levered of the names of already established brand names and reached a level of success. I started researching companies from many different industries and was quite amazed to find that there were at least a handful businesses in various industries I had researched who were leveraging off the already established names of successful companies and many of these small business were reasonably successful. I even had the opportunity to talk to a lawyer friend of mine who happens to specialize in Trademark Law who confirmed to me that this was a common practice of small businesses and the law has many loopholes and majority of such businesses were covered by law as they were operating under independent registered businesses and approved trademarks.
Most people take perception to be the reality and get fooled by the intelligent marketers and get persuaded into illusions and rarely come to know the truth. Some may say that truth itself is an illusion whilst others may be happy and satisfied with believing illusions to be the truth. I think a person must be aware of everything so that they can make better choices in life but sometimes your awareness can fool you as it did in my case and other times your awareness can work in your benefit as it did it the saloon owner’s case.
John Singh


