I have a service based business in NYC. It’s been around for many decades and we have a solid list of established clients. We have a decent market saturation of our 1-2 mile radius (again NYC) and I was thinking of opening up a smaller off shoot in a different neighborhood that has all the same characteristics (midtown now, financial district in mind) and am wondering - do I open a second location under the brand name, or do I go the route of starting it as its own business “sister company of xyz.”

Pros of a new brand- • SEO reach. This would give us a second unrelated GMaps profile and website. For more broad searches this means we might show up twice (if SEO is on point) • Using a more generic name - currently we are using a brand name that is only slightly tied to our service. For this I would use a much more generic (and SEO friendly) name. • can have a separate identity for higher/lower end clients and price points - not by much, but our established brand has a much rounder offering of services, new location would heavily focus on our main money maker.

Cons of a new brand • startup costs. I would probably spend 20-30k in web/SEO expenses in year one. • confusion with current/long term clients. I don’t see this being a major problem, but never know.

Does anyone have experiences with opening a second location under your umbrella but with a different brand? Anything else I may not be thinking of?