According to marketing experts, branding is essential to the success of your business. Your marketing and advertising strategies should be focused on establishing the name of your business as the one that consumers automatically associate with a particular product or service. When a business is operated under a fictitious name, it can make it difficult for people and other businesses to know the name of the true owner.
A dba check is a way to learn the true name behind a business. There could be any number of reasons why you might need to do a dba check, but the following are the three most common ones.
Individuals in business want to establish a brand
As previously mentioned, turning your company's name into a brand that people associate with a product can drive up sales. For example, John Smith might be an excellent interior designer, but doing business under his own name might not be the brand that conveys style, wealth and good taste to potential clients. Instead, he might choose to call his business "Allure Quality Interiors" and promote it with commercials showing luxurious home interiors.
The structure of a business might dictate an assumed name
Doing business with others as a partnership might make good sense, but the odds are that the name of the business will be fictitious. If that is the case, you must register your business as operating under a fictitious or assumed name. This is known as doing business under an assumed name.
Corporations and limited liability companies doing business under assumed names.
Corporations and LLCs generally do not register as doing business under an assumed name because they are created under the authority of state law as entities separate and apart from the individuals who might have ownership interests in them. Registration as doing business under an assumed name might be required if, for example, a retail store owned by the XYZ Corporation decides to do operate as "Bravo Furniture" and not as XYZ Corporation.
Finding out the name under which a person or entity is doing business usually requires a dba check of the records of the county in which the business is located. The search is usually done in the office of the county clerk, but locating the ownership behind an assumed business name for an enterprise located in a city might require a trip to city hall and the records of the city clerk.
Many counties and cities around the country have made their public records available online for individuals who might want to conduct searches, or you can go to the clerk's office to access the records in person. You can also use any one of a number of non-government websites on the internet that allow you to conduct a dba check for a slight fee. Government databases that allow free access to public records might charge a fee to obtain certified copies of documents.
