Lost in Translation: Finding our Name
I remember the first time that I heard the story of how Apple got its name. I chuckled when I read that the world’s most influential technology company got their name simply because they couldn’t come with anything better. It also made we wonder what life was like for aspiring business owners before the era of domain squatting.
As the legend goes, Jobs and Woz had been contemplating names for their partnership and none seemed to fit. After a trip to a commune that Jobs called an “apple orchard”, he suggested the name Apple Computers. It had a nice ring to it. After several attempts to find something with a more technical ring to it and failing, the Apple name stuck.
You’ll find, as we did, that finding our name wasn’t quite as simple.
Late in 2016, Marc Ammann filed the LLC paperwork to start Pacific by Northwest MFG Co. He intended for it to be a weekend outlet to shake off the stress of his day job at Huge in Portland, where we both worked. The thought was that perhaps he would earn a commission here or there. But really, it was a chance to use the skills passed down from his Grandfather and Uncle during warm summers and rainy winters growing up near the lake back in Northeastern Switzerland. The name was a play on that favorite of Hitchcock classics, “North by Northwest” and a nod to his new in home in the Pacific Northwest.
Just weeks later, in the early days of 2017, Huge decided to close their Portland office. The result was, just like that, making furniture on nights and weekends seemed to be less timely. When he and I first discussed opening our own Studio, the name, was there for the taking.
We called our good friend, Edgard, down in Colombia. Both of Marc and I had spent time in Huge’s Colombia offices. We found Medellin’s climate, people, and nearly everything else to be utterly delightful. The tech scene there was booming, the beneficiary of years of peace and investment. Some of our favorite people lived and worked in that city of perpetual springtime. Edgard joined us and things started to gain steam. Within a month, we found ourselves with two staffed offices in Portland and Medellin, working together as a single team.
In those first months, late nights and early mornings found us typically with coffee in hand. Our caffeine-fueled topics of conversation ranged from the services we’d offer, who we wanted to work with, and the values that would guide us along the way. The first two, we found, were much easier to articulate. All three of us had started successful business in the past and knew the challenges and importance of getting the values right.
We knew how we wanted to work and how we wanted to treat our people–honestly and openly. That one was easy. But when we said that we wanted to work on projects that mattered, it took a bit of digging to get to the core of the meaning of that word.
That the word was both specific and flexible enough to express more than we intended. Like a lot of people, we have a deep desire to leave the world better than we found it. Given our backgrounds and talents, it seemed we could do that with the marriage of design and technology to do so. That work could be done with causes but also with partners and brands who wanted to do the same.
We found that when unpacked the word matter a bit more, it applied to our commitment to human centered strategy, design, development, and consulting. We step back to observe of the challenges in people’s lives, how they solve them and how we can help. It is something that we’ve committed to doing in every project we take on when ever we can. And that’s helped us create and build experiences that clear away confusion and frustration and make their lives more enjoyable.
We also knew that we wanted to work on projects that mattered to us personally and spoke to our passions. Like many people carving their own path, we wanted to work on those things near and dear to our hearts.
Our excitement was contagious. Building our team and finding clients was made easier by articulating those values. People knew what Pacific by Northwest stood for and we got to do great work with people who shared our sentiments. But, we soon found out that sometimes things get lost in translation.
Early in November 2017, Marc had just returned from a trip back to Switzerland and we grabbed a beer to talk about home and his meetings with a couple potential clients. But before we could even get into the how the trip went, he surprised me by asking how married I was to the name Pacific by Northwest.
To be frank, I’d not thought of changing it those early days when it went from a furniture business in his garage to a digital product design and dev studio out of mine. At the time, I had remembered the story of how Apple got its name. We couldn’t come up with anything better, so like that, it stuck. After all this time, I had grown a bit attached.
Marc nodded and said he agreed. But then he told me about his time back home. People loved what we were doing. They loved our values and were excited by our work. But they couldn’t ever remember the name. For them it was just three random English words next to each other. Though they certainly knew of Portland, Seattle, lots of rain and forests of doug fir, Bigfoot and legendary craft beer, they weren’t as familiar with the region so present in our name.
We called Edgard and asked what he thought. He, like us, loved the name too but to a lot of people in Colombia, the words ‘Pacific’ and ‘by’ and ‘Northwest’ just didn’t go together in anyway that made sense to them. To them we were just PxNW–a name he had to repeatedly explain. We could see where this was going.
So we put our heads together and started talking about where we’d been and where we wanted to go. We talked about how we wanted to communicate with people. After a while we found our way back to that most important of words:
Matter.
And it all came together.
We’ve always focused on what matters–to the people who use the things that we create, to those that we work with, and to us personally. We were willing to put the work in to summit the challenges we face. We work hard to be a place where we can do what’s meaningful.
We’re the same company we’ve always been, but with a new name and a new mark. It’s one that we are proud of and one that we hope does a better job of saying who we are and what matters to us across languages and cultures.
Welcome to Matter Supply Co.
Matter Supply Co (formerly Pacific by Northwest) is dedicated to the craft of creating purposeful products and experiences that matter. Say hello next time you’re in Portland, OR or Medellin, Colombia or find us on LinkedIn.
