"Bright with a Y, dot com."

Some names are a lot harder to explain than that.

You could say the same about IKEA too. I'm still not sure I pronounce it properly...

Agreed. Misspelled brand identity is the equivalent of a shaky foundation.

Yet Flickr did ok for itself. As did Twittr, and del.icio.us (sp?). I agree that names matter but the scenario you've painted isn't fatal by any means. In the modern connected age, 'word-of-mouth' is just as much about text as it is about talking (ie FB posts, tweets, msgs, etc).

Indeed, Bryght's revenues are in the multi-millions so they're clearly doing something right.

If they're selling non-obvious quirky stuff, maybe having a non-obvious quirky name will help with branding.

Or not. But I don't think assuming it's a net negative is necessarily justified here.