Hookit CEO on Loop'd name change and more

The online action sports community formerly known as Loop’d.com has changed it name to Hookit.com after a trademark dispute with a heavily funded Silicon Valley company.

We asked CEO Scott Tilton some questions about the name change, if the company reached its revenue target of $2.7 million in 2009, and how business is looking for 2010.

Hookit has 550,000 members and offers sponsorship, brand insider loyalty programs, contests, eCommerce, community websites and online self-promotion tools for brand and athletes.

Why did Loop’d change its name?

We had to. After getting involved in an expensive and time-consuming trademark dispute over Loop’d, we agreed to settle and change our name.

Why Hookit.com? Our members picked it through a series of polls, interviews and surveys. Plus, we think it does a much better job of describing what the network is all about – a place to hook up with friends, brands and deals all around your sports.

For brands: We’re a place to hook up with a core audience of athletes and enthusiasts to market and sell your products.

How has the rise of Facebook impacted your business?

Facebook has helped our efforts and we’ve always differentiated ourselves as a vertical ‘niche’ network for action sports.

If anything, we’ve seen an increase in signups and activity. Both Facebook and Twitter and the media surrounding them have helped educate the brands for us so they understand the benefits of social media and how to utilize it as a means to connect with consumers to market and sell their products.

Where they are broad, we are focused on filling a void with features and services created specifically for the athletes and sports marketers. (There’s no reason for Oprah or your Aunt Judy to be on our network).

Our focus from a product perspective moving forward is not on how to compete with other networks, but how to integrate and distribute our features and services to allow members utilize them anywhere.

Did the company reach its revenue target of $2.7 million in 2009?

I think last year was an interesting year for everyone. By mid-year, brands and marketers were slashing budgets what seemed to be every week.

When the smoke cleared, we were profitable and happy to be in the position we were heading into 2010 with a solid business model, a new name and a fresh start.

Was the company able to raise the $60,000 it was looking for at Connect SI and the $3 million it needs for mobile and international expansion?

We ended up being over-subscribed from the Connect SI event and due to the cost of raising new capital from a dilution stand point, we decided to stay focused on maintaining our profitability and growing organically.

So our mobile projects got pushed to this year. We’ve got a great new app coming soon, which was a great way for us to extend our online features to serve what now is a mobile consumer.

We’re excited to be testing the limits of the new mobile “chip-sets” to create an app that is truly unique and relevant to the action sports lifestyle.

How is the social merchandising portion of the site going? Did the company reach its target of $4 million in transactions in 2009?

We’re seeing the largest percentage growth in our eCommerce business.

The economic factors last year really altered the way brands market and sell their products. As a targeted community where brands are an active and accepted participant, we’ve been really successful in aligning members with brands and driving new sales whether directly or to their online retailers.

Any lessons learned about trademarks and name changes that you can share with others?

There is so much activity going on right now and the trademark classes for digital businesses can be quite gray. A quick search you’ll find most online business trademarks are in one of four classes … 38, 42 and 45 and class 9 provides protection for software development businesses.

Our mark was approved the same week as the party we had the dispute with and we were in completely different classes with totally different models. It came down to first use, perceived confusion, future expansion possibilities and money to challenge the other party’s claims. Fortunately, we figured out a fair exit strategy that worked for us both.

Combining all this with the nearly impossible task of finding a suitable URL, my best advice would be to find a short list of available URLs, perform necessary trademark searches to evaluate the space and make a determination about the likelihood of confusion if others exist.

If you’re unsure or just starting out, avoid fighting this battle from the start. It could easily destroy your business before you’re even off the ground.

Another hint – check your URL’s history on a site like “archive.org.” We were caught a bit by surprise when we found out our URL was once used for adult content five years ago. We had to make a few requests to some web filter companies to be reclassified.

The good news is they deal with this type of issue frequently so their are pretty good systems in place and they were very helpful once they realized we are NOT an adult content site

Will the company grow revenues in 2010? If so, how?

The outlook is positive. It seems brands are more comfortable with how things are progressing economically and are opening up budgets again.

We’ve also worked hard last year to be sure to structure our deals in ways that are a win-win. This effort carried a lot of positive good will last year when everyone was in the same sinking boat.

This year, we will continue expanding our eCommerce channel and launch a number of new features for small and mid-size brands and retailers to connect with our now nearly 600,000 members.