These famous companies completely changed their names

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Snapple​

Snapple was originally founded to sell natural juice drinks to health food stores. The company called themselves Unadulterated Food Products, which was practical, but not particularly catchy! One of their popular drinks was advertised for its "snappy apple taste,” which eventually worked its way into the name.

 

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Tribune Publishing Co.​

Tribune Publishing Co. is the owner of newspapers like the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times. The company changed its name to Tronc in 2016, supposedly to avoid confusion with the company Tribune Media and to mark their alignment with modern media. The name change did not take, and they switched it back to Tribune Publishing Co. within a couple of years. Good choice!

 

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Target​

Target was born at the beginning of the 20th century when a man named George D. Dayton bought a company that he renamed the Dayton Dry Goods Company. It carried on with this name for half a century before they created a discount chain named Target in 1962. Target became their core business and the company officially renamed itself the Target Corporation in 2000.

 

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Electronic Arts​

Electronic Arts was created as an offshoot of Apple, but when it was first created in 1983 they simply called it Amazin’ Software. As video games grew in popularity and complexity, they decided to give the brand a more serious name that reflected the medium's increasing status as an art form.

 

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Clorox​

Clorox was founded in 1913 by the Electro-alkaline Company and was intended for industrial use. Users started to refer to the cleaning agent by combining the names of the two main ingredients–chlorine and sodium hydroxide. This led to the name Clorox, which the company officially adopted in 1922.

 

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WWE​

The World Wrestling Federation, better know as the WWF, changed its name in 2002 due to a trademark violation! They happened to have the same initials as the World Wildlife Fund, who decided to sue the World Wrestling Federation for the rights to the name.

 

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WWE​

The World Wildlife Fund won, and WWF became WWE, or World Wrestling Entertainment.

 

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AirTran Airways​

A low-cost airline called ValuJet made headlines in 1996 following a terrible tragedy. A flight of 110 people crashed in Florida leaving no survivors. They were accused of knowingly flying unsafe planes and were grounded for several months by the FAA. The company later acquired a smaller airline, AirTran Airways, and started using its name to move away from the scandal.

 

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American Outdoor Brands Corporation​

This brand used to be called Smith & Wesson Holding, the parent company of the well-known Smith & Wesson firearms brand. They decided to change their name and expand into other outdoor sports to stabilize their market value.

 

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American Outdoor Brands Corporation​

The gun market can be extremely volatile, as stocks fall dramatically after incidents like mass shootings. But the 2017 name change failed, as their stock value has dropped 50% since then.

 

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Bausch Health​

Valeant Pharmaceuticals became notorious for massively increasing the price of life-saving drugs they offered through one of their subsidiaries. This led to multiple high-profile lawsuits and a plummet in their stock value in 2015. They changed their name to Bausch Health in 2018.