The idea had been germinating for a while. Do I change the name of my business, or keep it? My business was over thirteen years old, steadily growing, increasingly successful. Would I be shooting myself in the foot by rebranding at this point?
As you know, if you have followed me from my Sara’s Soaps ‘n Such days, I spent the month of December sitting around delegating like a boss (haha!) with my right leg up, my knee in a brace following a patellar sublimation right before Thanksgiving. Idle hands lead to active mind, and I had nothing to do but sit around and think. Sometimes I dreamed up mischief, sometimes grand ideas, with the grand ideas quickly dominating my thoughts. It was in this time period that I decided to rebrand my business.
Why? My original business, Sara’s Soaps ‘n Such, spun off of a hobby. My name is Sara, I made soaps, I made other stuff (the “‘n Such”), and it seemed like a good name at the time. Over the years, though, it became so cumbersome! It’s long, it’s ridiculously easy to mistype, and it didn’t really reflect what my business had become. I went from a hobbyist-turned-business owner to a full-time business owner with large order accounts. My business had grown up, so it was time for the name to grow up.
How? Starting in 2014, I had developed strategies for growing my business in different directions, shifting my focus from primarily retail to primarily wholesale and private label, and along with this, I set annual goals for how I would accomplish this, and I wanted these strategies to manifest themselves this year (2016), which they have. Sitting around on my duff for 6 weeks afforded me many opportunities to catch up on educational opportunities related to my business and taking it where I wanted it to go. These educational moments highlighted for me the mistakes I’d made previously, but you know what was so cool about this process? It was like getting a second chance to start a new business, but in addition to the great new resources I had, I also had 13+ years of mistakes and experiences from which to draw.
Stay tuned… Part 2 will come up soon!
2 thoughts on “Making the Change, pt. 1”