Branding your Business

Branding your Business

What kind of image are you giving out about your business? When it comes to marketing our business' we could do well to take note of a man named  Fredric the Great that lived from 1740 to 1786. Fredrick the Great was a famous ruler of Germany and King of Prussia, he was also a man that understood rebranding. He knew if he had two sources of carbohydrates, bread and potatoes his economy would have less volatility and have less chance of famine and he would have two crops to fall back on and not be dependent on just one. The only problem is that no one wanted to eat potatoes. So he set out to change the perception of the potato. He decided to make the potato a royal food that only the royal family could consume. He went as far as to have royal potato patches that were guarded night and day. The catch was that the guards would guard the potatoes with special instructions from the royal family. The guards were to make sure that they didn't guard the potatoes very well. The poor people thought that if the potatoes were worth guarding they were worth stealing. Before too long there was a huge underground potato operation going on in Germany. What Fredric the Great did is he rebranded the potato which strengthened the economy. We may need to ask ourselves would it benefit my business to rebrand it?

Our ( MIT Powder Coatings) sister company Surplus Coatings is a great example of rebranding. Surplus Coatings began in 1995 as a reseller of off spec powder coating. The business model was this, manufacturers would make a powder coating not exactly right (aka off spec) and instead of throwing it away they would sell it to Surplus. Surplus would take the unwanted inventory and resell it to powder coaters. In no time at all the powder coating manufactures would pretend like they didn't know who Surplus was because they didn't want to be associated with making a powder coating that was off spec. Powder coaters were the same way, they didn't want to be associated with applying a powder coating that was off spec because their customers might think that their parts were coated with a defective coating. Before you knew it Surplus was the red headed step child of the powder coating industry.

Surplus Coatings decided it was time to  rebrand its self. To start the rebranding process, Surplus began  recycling all types of powder coating from off spec, bag house fines, reclaimed and waste powder coating. With Surplus' new and innovative ways of recycling, Surplus Coatings became one of the largest recyclers of powder coating in the world. This brough Surplus Coatings image from a red headed step child to the environmental pioneer in powder coating. This allows them to work with the largest users of powder coating in the world saving millions of tons of powder coating from landfills each year. For more information about how Surplus Coatings recycles powder coating go to www.surpluscoatings.com.