Why we went from The 8 Es to Swiss Escape
Earlier this year we opened a coworking and coliving space in a chalet in Switzerland. The idea was to bring people together in a remote location where they can be productive while building connections among each other.
The 8 Es was formed with a very functional perspective, keeping in mind that we can accommodate up to 8 entrepreneurs in our coliving space. We soon realized that the short form was not understood by many and often misinterpreted as “the 80s”, which is not bad if we were a cool band.
The past few months have been all about listening, learning and improving. When we launched our October campaign; “Free week stay in exchange for skills”, we had many applicants asking the same question during the interview “what does The 8 Es mean?”. Soon the interest of the coliving space was taken up by start-up companies who wanted a bigger capacity than just 8 people. We saw this as an opportunity to expand to a new market segment which resulted in adding another property, right below our current coliving space.
This meant we can’t call ourselves The 8 Es anymore since we can accommodate double the capacity now. This called for a brainstorming session. We put bloggers, marketeers and designers all on one table and gave each of them a piece of paper to jot down 5 names in 5 minutes before passing it to their neighbor and doing it again. By the end of the night we had 35 unique brand names and then voted for our top 3.
We slept on it and the next morning we had an epiphany. The origin of our business is in Switzerland, the quality of the experience we provide is Swiss. We all also resonated with our top name from the brainstorming session which was “Escape”. So there we have it, Swiss Escape was born.
We asked and tested with our customers and they all agreed that this coliving space is an escape from the usual routine. We envision a world where people are able to live and work from any location and still feel at home.
..And Swiss Escape does just that.
Haz & Fanny
Cofounders
www.swissescape.co
