Building Bezar
Takeaways From Creating A Brand In Five Months
Bezar is just 5 months old. In that short period of time we’ve created a dignified platform for designers, of all shapes and sizes, across multiple categories and disciplines, in myriad of states and countries around the world, to sell their wares to people who want an alternative to stale, big box retail. And we’ve begun delivering on our mission to make design more inclusive and accessible and to make ecommerce more colorful and optimistic. But we’re just at the beginning. We have much to prove, build, and do. We’re just starting.
Bezar as a brand, though, feels much older than 150 days old. Visually, it’s instantly recognizable and is imbued with a modern spirit and outlook. I am proud of that. How we got there is a fun little case study of how to build a brand.
You Rarely Get It Right The First Time
Bezar, like many brands, once had a different name. When I got the eventual founders of Bezar together last year and we started dreaming up a company I knew exactly what I wanted to call it: Design Scout. I loved the visual in my head when I said the words. I saw compasses and flags and tents and even imagined our site’s cart icon to be a knapsack. I loved the visual of our team scouting the world, planting our flags, and bringing home treasures to sell to our customers.
As I had just finished my time as Chief Design Officer of Backcountry, and because of that wonderful experience, the Utah influence was very much alive in me. We designed a logo and a website and created a deck and pitched investors and we raised money and started a company. We were off!
Design Scout was going to be next big thing in design and commerce!
Not so fast. Our trademark was denied. And I was devastated. How could we ever replace Design Scout? It was perfect, right? So we went scrambling for a new name. I really wanted to call it NapSak. Or KnapZak. Or something stupid like that. My cofounders, not so much. We toyed with names like NowHaus and WowHaus. We felt desperate. As anyone who ever had to change a company’s name before’s obviously felt. It sucks.
And right when I was about to go certifiably insane, working around my dining room table, we came up with Bezar, the phonetic spelling of two words: bizarre and bazaar. I think it was Matt Baer, our COO and founder, who came up with it. Though I am only 95% certain.
It’s a modern and short word, of the Uber and Casper and Houzz genre. And (almost) everyone loved it. (Now they all do or at least that’s what they tell me to my face).
Logos Should Not Be Complex
The Design Scout logo, like the name, was literal. And we would have had problems with it. Soon after abandoning Design Scout, we found other brands had similar aesthetics, logos, and used flag and compass iconography. For a company that was founded to champion designer’s rights and livelihoods, we could not have launched with an identity resembling others, even if entirely coincidental.
So the name change to Bezar gave us a clean slate to redesign. Together the team of PieterJan Mattan (Creative Director and founder) and Hannah Mode, both of whom created much branding and imagery with me at Fab, designed a logo and UX pretty quickly. Our design language and identity had to address the ethos and pillars of our brand: It had to get out of the way and compliment the products as Eva Zeisel once said about good design, “you just have to get out of the way.” It had to be modern, but not feel retro or kitsch. It had to speak to both women and men (harder than you think). And it had to somehow tell our story visually, one of connecting people who design special things with people who desire special things.
Bezar’s simple disc logo was an instant hit internally. It recalled the graphic treatments of 1960s brands we loved. It incorporated our name into the actual design (the Z in BEZAR bisects the circle) and it allowed for a design of a collapsed version of the logo too (seen on bezar.com when you scroll down a page in the collapsed header or on mobile).
More importantly than being modern and graphic, it told our story visually: two sides of a coin, of a circle, of a story. Our designers on one side, our customers on another, and us in the middle. In a few days we locked on the logo and went with our instincts. We moved on to color.
Color Does Not Make A Brand
At this point we’d begun building a website and company. But one thing about our brand’s identity remained unsettled: what would be Bezar’s color palette? This one was tough. Most brands have it easy. Choose a palette and stick to it. Coca-Cola is red. Ikea is yellow and blue. Facebook, blue. Pinterest, red. Target, red. (So many red brands!). But we desire to be the most colorful brand in the world built by some really colorful people. How do you marry that to any one color?
A few brands that had used multiple colors effectively stuck out in our heads. The first was Braniff Airways, the now defunct airline that painted their planes all different colors and hired Alexander Girard and Emilio Pucci to design for them (could there be a better combo in the world?). Everything Braniff made was multi-colored, including uniforms and even planes, things as tiny as matchbooks. We loved their identity so much and thought how could we too do the same? We filled the Bezar circle with complimentary and contrasting colors. And, yet, nothing stuck. We were stuck.
I thought a lot about Google too. Their multicolored and ever-changing logo gave me hope we could figure it out. Rainbows, however, were off the table (too cheesy) and even with a Google-esque design, we’d still need to choose at least some colors.
So I sent an email to Kenny Lerer, founder of Huffington Post and Managing Partner of Lerer Hippeau Ventures, our lead investor. The email said something like this:
“Hey Kenny, we changed the name to Bezar. I hope you like it. I love it. One thing I cannot decide on is this: how can I settle on a color? I’m the color guy! Bezar will be the color brand! How can I choose? Thx, Bradford.” (I secretly was freaking out in case he did not like Bezar).
Luckily he too loved it. Kenny’s almost immediate answer: “Don’t pick a color!”
Kenny worked with MTV in its heyday and God was he was right! MTV’s mark remained unchanged over time. What did change: the color. And so that was that: Bezar would NOT have a color palette. Or, we’d have the biggest palette in the world: every color.
MTV in the 80s was a lot like the company we’re building. They curated undiscovered and emerging artists and presented them to young people (and music buffs) hungry for the next big thing. We’re doing that with design.
So the Bezar logo changes color every single day onsite. Our emails are a different color every single day. My business cards, every one of them, is a different color. For a retailer selling colorful goods made by colorful designers intended for colorful people, it ended up being the best decision to solidify our POV. There’s a consistency in our inconsistency that works.
The Details Are Not The Details
Charles Eames, arguably the most important designer from the Mid-Century, famously once said “The details are not the details. They make the design.”
He was right.
When building a brand you need a myriad of things to come together to make magic. It’s calculated. Like baking. Like architecture.
You need a mission bigger than you are. At Bezar we’re aware we’re not stopping war nor curing cancer. But we are helping small businesses compete with big box retail giants and we’re defenders of the intellectual property rights of makers, designers, and artists. So, we’re doing good. That’s a detail.
You need a point of view. Retail’s lame, especially ecommerce. It’s stale. It’s calculated. And it’s lowest common denominator, focused on quick shipping and lowest prices. But style, curation, and the artistry of old-fashioned retailing (think of your favorite boutique, do you recall the same love for an online store?) are valuable and worthy of celebrating. And need to be coupled with best in class analytics and technology and operations. That’s a detail.
You need to build something the world needs. The world does not need another soulless online store. That’s the truth. Ecommerce companies desperately need to connect with consumer’s emotions the way social companies have. Instagram is emotionally addictive because it’s inspiring (you get to see the world through other’s eyes). Pinterest is emotionally addictive because it’s empowering (you get to collect your inspirations from around the world). Facebook is emotionally addictive because it’s connective (you get to see the world and likes of people you know). Is Amazon emotionally addictive? Not for me. But no one can get you books, Pampers, pencils, and the like faster and cheaper than Amazon. No one. And that’s awesome. The world does not need another Amazon.
And you need to be obsessed with the details when courting consumers who already are overwhelmed with choices.
At Bezar we’re obsessed with the details. With the products we sell. With our own brand’s identity. With our customer’s experience. With our running a sustainable commerce brand. With our designers’ livelihoods. And with standing out and standing for something in the world.
And we’re just getting started.
