LLC "Doing Business As"

[MrVuLe110]

I am opening an online retail store where I will be selling motorcycle parts. After some research, I am deciding to register my business as an LLC. I wanted to know though, if you file as a LLC, must you always have to put "LLC" after your business name? Say I register my business as Motorcycle Parts LLC and I want to start a .com, can I use motorcycleparts.com and just use Motorcycle Parts as my business name throughout the website? Or do I have to file for a "DBA". I've already registered my trademark without the LLC. I like the protection an LLC gives me, but I dont like having the letters "LLC" in my marketing.

[wully00]

I ran into the same issue when I first started my site. My company's legal name is Elevate Printing, LLC. My domain is Elevateprinting.com and "Elevate Printing" is what I use in my marketing materials. The best explanation I've heard is that it is similar to how you use a nick name in real life. I can go throughout life being referred to as "Mike Smith," but I have to use "Michael Smith" to pay taxes, sign contracts, etc. I would definitely include it in things such as your privacy policy and whatnot, all you have to say is something like Motorcycle Parts, LLC and its affiliates ("Motorcyle Parts")

I hope this helps.

Michael

[Hooman]

^ Thanks for making this thread, I was wondering about this too.

[BusinessAdviser]

Do not construe this as legal advice, but instead understand that it is just based on my experience.

Each state has its own laws regarding LLCs. Here, for example, the statute clearly states what your LLC must contain in its registered name. However, we registered a DBA so that we didn't have to continue using LLC in our name each time. I think the key is that you do not want any consumer to mistakenly believe that you are NOT a limited liability company. Just to be safe, we opted to include the word Limited in our DBA: Estate Publishers Limited.