The time we got our branding wrong.
A number of months ago when we were branding our new sister brand, www.gerdanthony.com, we thought it would be a good time to have a look at our own branding at www.sastawear.com.
We had the services of one of the World's greatest logo designers at the time, and we simply asked him if there was something he could do with our current logo, to modernise it and make it more 'urbany'. We believe he did and awesome job, and we told him so and we were pleased with what he came up with.
So what mistakes were made?
We did not engage enough with you guys. We didn't put out questionnaires to our most prolific customers to gauge their thoughts. We had asked a handful of customers if they liked our new logo, and they actually did, but I feel they did so with the knowledge that they might hurt our feelings had they disliked it. We also ran with our new logo too quickly. I didn't even test it on mockups before releasing garments. It looked well on computer screens but when we eventually bought a sample embroidered hat, the logo was too complex for the 3D, high end embroidery we like to give you guys. So what have we done to rectify this?
Simply put, we went back to our original logo. We are now using the Sásta 'S' again. Our customers have emailed us to say they are delighted, and we now have some garments for sale online using our original logo. Although the new logo was equally as good as the original, it will not be condemned to the trash basket. We can use this for some of our more 'urbany' styled garments in the summer for example.
The newer of the Sásta Wear logos.
So what's the moral of this blog?
For me, it's admitting I got something wrong, and choosing a public domain to rectify it, which is actually a difficult thing to do. It's also a learning curve for me personally. For one, there was nothing wrong with the original logo, it worked, people recognised it and it was doing well. I did notice a slump in sales after we ran with the newer of the logos, (above).
So having addressed the mistake, we're moving on to a new and exciting time, with spring approaching.
We're excited that we have the original logo back, and excited to designing some new stuff using it.
We hope you guys will continue to support Sásta as you always have, and I look forward to having your opinion on the new stuff.
Is mise le meas,
Gerd.