Every business name has a story. Some are carefully workshopped in boardrooms. Others emerge from market research and focus groups. Ours came from a cardboard box.
The Word
I live in Japan, and when my son was born, we named him Ginga (銀河). In Japanese, it literally means “silver river”—a poetic reference to the Milky Way as it appears streaking across the night sky. More broadly, it refers to galaxies: vast, swirling collections of stars, planets, and infinite possibility.
It’s a name that carries weight here. It speaks to something bigger than ourselves.
The Box
When Ginga was about six months old, we were packing up our apartment for a move. Boxes everywhere. At some point, as babies do, he found his way into one of them—sitting there contentedly, playing with a toy, completely unbothered by the chaos around him.
I grabbed a marker and wrote “Ginga’s Box” on the side.
And then it clicked.
Gingabox.
The Meaning
A galaxy in a box. The infinite contained in something tangible. Japanese meets American English. It felt like the perfect metaphor for what we do and who I am—an American living and raising a family in rural Japan, where the “silver river” flows brightly overhead.
The internet is vast—incomprehensibly so. Every website is a small piece of that universe, a contained space where ideas take shape and connections happen. Our job is to take something as expansive as a client’s vision and give it form. To put a galaxy in a box.
The name also tied me to my son in a way that felt right. Building a business is personal. It’s late nights and early mornings. It’s sacrifice and hope. Having his name woven into it reminds me why I do this and who is important.
The Rest
I registered the domain that week. Built the first version of the site shortly after and started taking on clients under the new name. That was nearly 20 years ago.
The rest, as they say, is history.
But every time I see our logo or type out the name, I think of that moment—a baby in a cardboard box, a marker in my hand, and the spark of an idea that became something real.
That’s gingabox. A galaxy of possibilities, contained in a box.
— Ryan