A Christian book company with the initials “CBD” has decided to drop the name after being inundated with requests for cannabis-related products.
Christian Book Distributors, which is the largest distributor of Christian products, said the company wants to avoid “brand confusion” after receiving numerous calls from customers searching for hemp products, Fox News reported.
The company, which was started by two brothers in Massachusetts in 1978, announced in June that it will now go by the name “Christianbook” to avoid any confusion with the popular trend in cannabis-derived oils bearing the same initials.
“The problem is the other CBD is just so popular at this point in time that it just kind of overwhelms our brand,” Christianbook President and CEO Ray Hendrickson said in an interview with the New York Times.
“I was driving my mom down the road recently,” Hendrickson commented. “She saw a sign that said ‘CBD sold here.’ I was like, ‘No, mom. That’s not us.'”
The company also noted in a statement that a Google search for “CBD” used to rank them at the top of the page, but that is no longer the case.
The statement continued:
Now ‘our CBD’ is nowhere to be found in the search results, only sites for the cannabis product are listed, and paid ads are no longer allowed. As this wave of popularity over the ‘other CBD’ is not likely to subside, we will stop referring to ourselves as ‘CBD’ and will also drop the word ‘Distributors’ from our company name. Going forward, we will operate under the name of ‘Christianbook.’
However, Sarah Bolme, director of the Christian Indie Publishing Association, said she believes the change will be a positive thing for the company.
“As CBD became more widely known for the product derived from the cannabis plant than a Christian book company, changing their brand was the wise choice for Christianbook,” she wrote in a newsletter for Marketing Christian Books.
“Wise authors and publishers will monitor their brand and be willing to make changes should a more popular similar name or acronym become more of an impediment to their brand than an asset,” Bolme concluded.