I have a logo.
It's printed on everything.
I have no idea if it makes any difference or not.
I got mine by running a contest through the
99 Designs website. Someone here suggested it and I loved the process and the result.
I don't have a great looking old house like so many here have, so putting an outline of my building in my logo just didn't work for me.
There are lots of options in doing a 99 Designs contest, but you basically post what you want on their site and designers from all over the world submit designs to you. You only pay if you like one, and through the process you can communicate with different designers, saying I like this and I don't like that, and they will resubmit with changes to meet your needs.
I think I had about 30 different designers submit in my contest. Over time I narrowed it down to the top 10, then top 5, then picked a winner, a guy from The Philippines.
To get more and better designers in my contest, I selected two options that really attracted them. At that time the minimum you could offer was $250 for a logo, but I offered $350 to the winner, and I guaranteed that someone WOULD be the winner. (You have the option of not picking a winner and keeping your money, but if you go that route the best designers won't bother to submit to your contest.)
The logo I ended up with was nothing like what I originally asked for, but when I saw it I liked it's simple elegance, which was the image I wanted my logo to send, and I knew it was something that would work etched on glassware and other objects where you couldn't use shades of gray or colors in the logo. You need to pick something that works well even faxed in black and white.
Where are you finding your umbrellas? I looked for ones I could put my logo on for the very purpose you mentioned, but it turned out to be way too expensive to just get a half dozen made, so I bought plain blank umbrellas.