In a previous article here on WP Guerrilla I spoke about how I was going to be taking the dive into the Wordpress Premium Theme market and today I am going to give some updates on the status of everything that has been going on since then – so sit back and relax, because a lot has gone on.
When things first started to get put together, I had plans on building up the network of Guerrilla websites (which consist of made by Guerrilla, WP Guerrilla, Guerrilla Freelancing & soon will also include The Design Guerrilla). I spent some time building up my main portfolio, getting some work under my belt, writing articles for my two blogs and building them up. My goal was to build up the GUERRILLA brand and have the theme site become a part of that.
So when I jumped into things and really wanted to push forward with it, the name choice was Guerrilla Themes, however, I bought the domain www.guerrillapremium.com first because I remember seeing another premium theme website with a vary similar name (Gorilla Themes) and I didn’t want to have a name that was pronounced the same.
After discussing things with a few people, I decided that it should be alright since the Guerrilla Themes was built on the brand and network I was working on so it shouldn’t be a problem. However, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something just wasn’t right. In the meantime, I did set up a coming soon page on the Guerrilla Themes website, I set up the @GuerrillaThemes twitter account and I put plans into action.
I spoke with the awesome Brian Gardner from Studio Press on twitter about a week ago and was explaining my ideas and goals for my new theme site and he mentioned that the name thing might throw people off and that I should discuss things with the Gorilla Themes owner to make sure everything was cool. So I sent a twitter message to the @GorillaThemes twitter account and asked for an email address. Within 24 hours from that point, we had our first interaction.
After talking with Carlos (who is a great, level headed guy with some awesome wordpress themes) back and forth a few times, I made the decision to change the name. Although the GuerrillaThemes name would have fit well into my network, stepping on someone else’s toes was not something I wanted to do. So the brainstorming begins – and it didn’t take long before I decided on a new name.
The new name I landed on was GIANT themes. I immediately felt like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders and I started setting everything up. I set up the twitter account for @GIANTthemes and also set up the coming soon page with the newsletter subscription.
So, whats in store for the future? We’ll, we’re launching on January 1st 2010, we’re giving away themes through our twitter account and also setting up some giveaways on other blogs. We’ll be launching with 1 paid theme and 2 free themes.
I’ll be releasing more information here as well as on the GIANT Themes website once we get closer to launch (and maybe even some discounts and/or free themes through the newsletter on the GIANT Themes website, so make sure you’re subscribed to the RSS feed here and the newsletter there).
