How can i market myself in a brolly ??

**Darren at 1st Accountancy Serv Ltd** · 4 November 2004, 14:51

Separate Business

Do you mean run it as a separate business all together?

If so, there should be no problem.

**sdburns** · 4 November 2004, 15:15

Re: Separate Business

No,

I'll try and explain myself a bit better.

I'm "employed" by my umbrella company say Umbrella Co Ltd. But i would like to build a web prescence & market myself. (Say , SB Systems)

The "SB Systems" would just be a marketing name that i would use on my buisiness cards & website. all invoicing / tax etc would be carried out via Umbrella Co Ltd.
this gives me flexibility in that i can have whatever umbrella company i want doing my invoicing but i can still maintain my web prescence as SB Sytems.

I would never register SB Sytems as a ltd company, i just want a name that i can use independant of whatever brolly company i'm using.

The question is - is this legal ?

**nobody here but us chickens** · 4 November 2004, 16:30

trading names

Have a look on the comp house site - Im sure they have a leaflet on trading names. - what you have to do etc.

You brolly might not allow this though. Since they are the company that does the invoicing and you are an employee what are the issues with liability, etc. Just because they have insurance for contracting - Where they are not in direct dealing with the end user, doesnt mean that they are ok about what you do. If I ran a brolly I wouldnt let people do this.

Anyway - you are almost certainly better running as a sole trader or with your own ltd if you are going down this route.

**fiddleabout** · 5 November 2004, 00:02

Re: trading names

You answered NO to Darren but your answer actually says YES.

Just because you are working for a brolly there is no restriction on you running a seperate enterprise of your own - Ltd. or otherwise.

The only problem would be the name - you may wish to register it in some way as a tradmark or trading name (I don't know how though) to ensure it belongs to you and there is no conflict with some other business.

Rhino and I jointly run a number of websites and all we have registered are the domain names. We operate ITDoctors and ************ as joint enterprises half owned by each of our Ltd. companies and our two car sites AutoBits and ******* as a non-incoporated SE partnership. We have other domains registered (CoinTrader and CoinTraders) but have not done anything about the site yet and are planning a dental website without even a domain decided on yet - these will all come under the SE partnership.

In short you can do just about anything you want to and it is not necessarily connected in any way with your main source of income.

**datestamp** · 15 November 2004, 11:02

Re: Separate Business

sdburns -

simple answer to a simple question:

Go out and set yourself a website up under the name SB Systems.co.uk (or whatever is available and pleases you).

Done. As long as you refer to yourselves as SB Systems.co.uk and not SB Systems there should be no problem. Yes - someone could start up a limited company called "SB Systems Ltd", or "SB Systems and son Ltd", or "SB Systems (London) Ltd" etc etc But so what.

You don't need any company structure to set up a website.

**Mordac** · 17 November 2004, 10:35

Why would you want to market yourself within a brolly? If you are working (or planning to work) for multiple clients and not using standard agency contracts, you have a perfect excuse to start a ltd co and forget about IR35. Brollies are only for blatant IR35 fodder and the terminally lazy; I'm not sure which category I fall into, I tend to hover between the two.

How can i market myself in a brolly ??