How These Well-Known AV Companies Got Their Names

ZeeVee

Our original company name, while we were operating in stealth mode, was “Zazzle Technologies.”

A few months after we started the company, another company grabbed the hotly-desired “Zazzle” name and applied it to its “Zazzle Technology” to create custom printed mugs, tee-shirts and the like. For good measure, Zazzle #2 grabbed every possible combination of Google search terms and word combinations, leaving us Zazzle-bereft.

So, over the course of a long day, we all locked ourselves in a room (two engineers, our sales guy, and a manager) with pizza, chocolate and no way out until we had a new contender. Since we were initially developing and marketing a consumer product designed to change the way people consumed media, we wanted something simple and catchy. The HD television transition was occurring, everyone was just getting their big screens and it really felt like TV watching was changing. We were going to help push it along.

What should the “next generation” of TV going be called?  “ZeeVee,” of course, as in “what’s on ZV tonight?”

ZeeVee has since pivoted into serving the professional and commercial markets but our renewed name continues to serve us well.

— Steve Metzger (VP, Hardware & Operations)