What is our brand?

Oh goodness, another post on business development?

Maybe the first thing i should do is is try to wrestle a definition of what a brand or branding is:

So many words, and such a challenging concept to wrap our minds around, or is it? Steve and I like to look at our business brand as a lifestyle. WE have drawn from our own life and created products that will meet needs, offer answers and be the best we can create. We believe that how we listen to and communicate with our customers is a very important part of our brand. The ingredients in our soap are the best we can buy and speak of our desire to make the best we can. Our responsiveness to customers, researching their requests and bringing answers is another part of the essence of our brand.

Our soap is simply wrapped in a light wax paper, and a banded label that is simple, clean and gets to the point. We think our customers value the bars being completely wrapped, yet able to still smell through the wrapper. And we thing that the simplicity of the bar allows the real hero which is the ingredients to be the focal point of the products. No fru fru, or novelty looks – simple soap, made well and with great care.

Our silk scarves are packaged in a simple box, with a care tag that enables the recipient of the wearable art to know how to love and get the longest life out of it.

Our signature logo is a sunflower. It was not random to select the sunflower. We wanted a symbol that is bold, very natural, and represented more than just a pretty flower. Perhaps its is an old fashioned idea, but each type of flower has a symbolic meaning. We all think of roses for mothers day…. because it evokes love. So what does the sunflower tell us?

“Bright and cheery, warm and inviting like the summer sun — Sunflowers (Helianthus) represent adoration, loyalty and longevity. Known as “happy” flowers, Sunflowers also speak of strength, positivity, positive opportunities and friendship.” Want to learn more about the meaning of flowers? Click this link –> (*) This flower represents our brand well – we want to always be warm and inviting, positive and offering the world more than just soap and silk. We want to leave our customers uplifted, encouraged, and pleased to know that great care has gone into our products. The actual logo above was from a photo i took of our impromptu sunflower patch under our bird feeder. I am a novice at photoshop, but was playing around with this photo and fell in love with the muted almost watercolor look with outlining.

Color also carries a meaning to our packaging and marketing. The logo sunflower is predominantly shades of yellow. We turned to the internet and researched color theory, and enjoyed searching for the right color to speak to our business. Yellow evoked cheerfulness, happiness, fun, optimism, originality, confidence, willingness to take on challenges, logic and creativity. The color was so important to us because it tells our story of the business being built on a shoestring budget as we both tried to recover from losing our career jobs, with the economy in a dark place, and our employment opportunities not seeming to be found. We threw our heart and soul into building this business, and guard the brand fiercely because it has been crafted in that crucible of challenge.

So there is a lot more to brand than a name. Its a product, its the product maker, and its how we represent our name.