Question about selling products online

[wallander]

Dear Thaivisa community,

I have a question related to e-commerce and it would be great if someone could help me in this related matter.

I have a registered Thai company that provides web-services (e-commerce included let's assume it's called ABC Co., Ltd.) - what I would like to do now is to establish an e-commerce platform where I can sell my services to an international market, however from a Marketing and SEO point of view the name ABC would not really work well. Does anybody know if I allowed from a legal perspective to brand the e-commerce website differently (for example call it XYZ.com + have an unique logo)?

Someone told me this should not be a problem if I issue all invoices generated from that website under my real company name and put a footer notice such as "ABC Co., Ltd. trading as XZY.com" with related company contacts, however I am not really sure.

It would be greatly appreciated if someone could shed some more light on behalf of this subject.

Thank you very much,

Walter

Edited March 18, 2014 by wallander

[bumpkin]

A Web address is not the same as a registered Company name.

As long as you are not attempting to deceive, or pass yourself off as some other person/organisation/company, then you can use any Web Name you choose. Many marketing organisations use a Brand name for their Web address, rather than their Company name.

As you indicate, one way to make the site ownership clear is to state it in the "small print".

[Overcome]

Bumpkin is right. You need company registration to be able to obtain things such as your payment gateway enabling you to offer a full range of e-commerce payment services and that, along with your bank accounts and other 'formal' company documentation is presumably under ABC Thailand.

But you could without any issues offer, for example, an English/international website branded 'XYZ' selling a different product range and accepting USD and another iteration branded JKL jn German accepting EUR in payment.

If you wanted to dot i's and cross t's you would have your leval pages (site terms, privacy policy, copyright, other terms or disclaimers) state ABC as the master entity and the others 'trading as XYZ ..' or 'operating as XYZ ...'

You may need to think about what entity name appears on customer credit card statements to avoid confusion.

Your shopping cart software should allow you to have different tax and shipping arfangements for each site as well as different currencies, but still feeding back into ABC's payment gateway and if you want it, ABC's GL and consolidated accounts.

[jjablonsky]

For some one with a web company selling services internationally you seem to be in-knowledgeable in the area. My suggestion, either hire some one who knows how to do it or find a different venture.

[thailandbeachisland]

Aren't we here to do exactly what we want without asking if it's right or not ?

[Giuti]

Hi Wallander,

I also run Web and SEO (small company) in Jakarta, however I didn't use company name for brand but website name instead. It also a good idea as long as you can promo your services on the net. As we are members of this forum, may we can colaborate

Edited March 31, 2014 by Giuti