If you’ve read our story, you know that “UniMovers” was originally “College Movers.” Since we’ve changed we’ve gotten a lot of mixed reactions. Some love it, some hate it, and some are confused by it. So finally, after almost nine months since we made the change, I decided to get on my soapbox or rather, our blog, and tell you a little bit about why we switched our name to UniMovers and how our brand has changed over the years.
When I started College Movers, we had just one location started in Cedar Rapids, IA. I was living in student housing at Coe College at the time and College Movers was just intended to help with tuition (and the tips as beer money of course).
By 2019, I was getting ready to graduate and looking at all of my options. Now, keep in mind I got my undergraduate degree in physics, so the obvious path was between industry or graduate school. My friend and roommate, Moritz, pushed me to do something outside of the norm (something we both love doing). I ended up applying for Fulbright programs, looking into the Peace Corps, and, of course, continuing my work with College Movers.
While I always had the entrepreneurial bug, I never intended on pursuing College Movers as a serious business beyond my first year after college, but as most small business owners can likely attest, you get sucked in. I got really excited about building something and realized that this business had a lot of potential. I wound up working the entire summer building the business and by 2020 I was scoping out a second location (which would wind up being Wilmington, NC) to test if this business model could work outside of Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
By mid-2020, we started launching a few locations, tested out some different theories, and were starting to build a real, multi-location moving company with locations in South Carolina, North Carolina, Iowa, and Massachusetts. Our intention was to keep things as simple as possible so people could easily start a business and support local college students while doing it. We had real momentum, but this was when we started to get some pushback. Pushback that made us reconsider our name moving forward.
College Hunks Hauling Junk (one of the largest moving company franchises in the United States) reached out to us claiming we were infringing on their intellectual property (IP). Now, this is not something to be taken lightly, but after spending a good bit of that year’s profits by consulting with a few IP attorneys, we calmed down. Our attorneys told us this is a scare tactic many large companies use to protect their IP and that we would probably be okay. However, if they did think having “College” in our name was too similar, this was not the bear to be poking.
Even though our attorneys thought we’d be okay, this got us thinking… Did we really want to continue using this name? We knew we lost out on business because people thought we only moved college students, and we often had to do a little education anytime someone called, informing people that we moved more than just college students.
We also did some research and found there were a plethora of moving companies called “College Movers” or some variation of the name. In addition, we couldn’t get the domain because a company in Massachusetts owned it (we had thecollegemovers.com).
So here we were, wanting to expand our business, but without a unique name to do it with. It was time for a change.
TIP: If you’re going to change business names do it yesterday!
“UniMovers” was always a name I had in the back of my head. I actually remember checking out the domain price every few months (It was listed for a few thousand!). I liked the word, I liked how it flowed of the tongue, and I liked how it still maintained that college student aspect as well (University and college is often called “Uni” in different parts of the world like Australia and the UK). “UniMovers” also made sense because something I had been wanting to do for a while was to become a more active part of our community. To partner with local organizations and also give a portion of our revenue back to our community through local non-profits.
So, one day, when I was pondering the list of 100 or so choices, I decided to check the price on that domain unimovers.com. And there is was listed for A TENTH of what it had been all those months prior. I had to jump on the opportunity.
Our brand change was definitely a chore. We reached out to the press and sent messages out to all of our previous customers… And kudos to one of our customers in Charleston who reached out to the local owner, and told him a previous mover of his, Collin, was starting a competing moving company against College Movers called “UniMovers” hahaha… Anyways it took several months, but we were finally confident with the name, confident with our efforts to notify previous customers, and confident moving forward.
We hope you like the new name, but just for fun here’s a list of a bunch of names we had thought of that didn’t make the cut… Some for obvious reasons hahaha. Let us know your favorite in the comments.
- UniMovers
- University Movers
- Move University
- Mortar Board movers
- Study Haul Movers
- Tassel Moving
- Academic Moving/Movers
- Scholastic Movers
- Scholars Moving
- Academia movers
- All-Conference Movers
- Enrolled movers
- Ivy Moving
- Masters in Moving
- We Move
- Summit Movers
- Straight A Moving/Movers
- Dean’s List Movers
- Alumni Moving/Movers
- Local dudes hitting moves
- Upper Class Movers
- Admissions Movers
- Geeky Moves/movers
- Savant Moving/Movers
- Savy Movers
- Sage Moving
- Peak 1 Movers
- Keystone movers
- Upper Class Movers
- Silver Oak Moving
- National Movers
- Movers University
- MovingU
- We Move University
- Grad Cap movers/moving
- Cap and gown moving
- Educated Movers
- UStud Moving
- UStudMoving.com
- University Studs Move U
- College Studs Moving
- Dream Job Movers
- Student studs moving
- Studemovers
- Studemoves
- Universimoves
- UniversiDudes Moving
- UDudes Moving
- Few Dudes Moving
- Go Dude Moving
- Dudes Moving
- The U Moving
- Varsity Moves
- Smart Movers/Moving/Moves
- All-State Movers
- Ivy League Movers
- ADHD Moving
- Big Movers on Campus (BMOC)
- DiploDudes Moving
- Diploma Dudes Moving
- EduMovers
- EduMoves
- Commencement Moving
- Pando Moving
- Majoring Movers
- Textbook Movers
- Enrolled Movers
- 2 men no truck
- 5th Year Moving
- Will move for Busch light
Collin Flynn comes born and raised in Racine, Wisconsin off the coast of Lake Michigan. He graduated from Coe College in 2019 with a degree in physics. He is the founder of College Movers, a company that enables young entrepreneurial-minded people to open their own business utilizing the gig-economy and its technological backing. Collin has 4+ years of experience in the moving industry and writes about moving, fitness, and business. When he's not managing his business you can find him running, biking, or swimming — after all he does have triathlons to train for.
