After 16 years of building Storm Smart Industries —and its brand recognition — president Brian Rist reluctantly admitted his business had outgrown its name.

The company was built on a core business of hurricane shutters, fabric protection screens and impact-resistant windows.

Now, however, more customers want help reducing their home energy costs, installing solar energy collectors and organizing smart home electronics to control it all, Rist said.

The Smart Companies Inc. launched this month, rebranding the company to bring all of the former Storm Smart business operations under a master company.

“We needed to reflect how much the company has grown and how much our services have expanded,” Rist said. “It wasn’t about getting rid of anything, but marrying them together.”

For example, impact-resistant windows cut energy loss through windows and storm screens can shade a sunny window, allowing the room to stay up to 7 degrees cooler.

A single 24-inch-by-10-inch solar collector can power up to seven roll-down shutters and smart home electronics can allow you to operate them all throughout the house.

Rebranding a business is not an easy decision, but more companies may consider it because they have been shaped and changed by the economy, said Chris Spiro, chief executive officer of Spiro & Associates, a marketing, advertising and public relations firm in Fort Myers.

“You can’t force a square peg into a round hole when the market is changing,” Spiro said.

Carol Conway, president of Cape Coral-based CRS Technology Consultants, said you have to listen to customers to know if your brand makes sense. In 2001, hers said it was time for a change.

“Clients were telling me that Computer Rescue Squad was cute, but limiting and it didn’t truly represent the scope of our services,” Conway said. The company’s services increasing included IT management in addition to tech support.

That resulted in a name change to CRS Technologies, which was further tweaked two years ago when Conway’s staff “held an intervention” and convinced her to update the company’s website, letterhead and logos.

“I had designed a lot of that myself and it was hard for me to admit I wasn’t as cool or contemporary as I thought I was,” Conway said. “Thousands of dollars and tons of anxiety later, it is one of the best things we ever did.”

For The Smart Companies Inc., Rist enlisted Spiro’s help to shape the new brand.

“This was customer driven because the demand for these expanded services came from an underserved marketplace,” Spiro said. “But, there is an amazing amount of equity in the Storm Smart brand.”

So those brands didn’t entirely disappear. Storm Smart Building Systems, Storm Catcher and Go Energy Smart still exist as company divisions, Rist said.

But the company still had to invest in updated signs, letterhead, business cards, fleet branding and web site redesign. By the time he factors in the cost of advertising campaign, Rist estimates the re-branding will cost close to $100,000.

“I believe for the future of this company, this was the right thing to do,” Rist said.

Via News-Press

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