Origins #5 — Branding
The thinking behind our brand name and logo
Previously, we shared some learnings from our first trip to Bulgaria where we met with manufacturers and experts from the textiles industry. It was time to start thinking about what we are going to call our brand.
On the flight back, I started writing possible names for our brand on my phone, whatever came to mind. I wish I didn’t delete the contents of that note after we chose it though, but anyway, the idea was to quickly write down anything that could be a possible candidate for discussion. Fortunately, Marin had done a similar exercise and still keeps the note of possible names that didn’t make the cut.
Some of the names we considered:
Alegro wearalegro.com
Ordo (order)
Paratus (prepared)
Curago (take charge)
Hackwork
Young & Wise
Activewear
Activ
Eager
Refactor
Hardwired
UpFront
Qool
AVE
We previously agreed on a few requirements/characteristics, that our brand name should have:
- Be short, easy to remember and pronounce
- Have a strong connection to us and to what we were trying to accomplish with this venture
- Had to look good on a future store front ;)
After I put everything I had as an idea on paper (phone), there were a few that stood out, which I decided I would share with Marin, once I land and get some WiFi :)
Reading through them, there was one that caught my eye. In my opinion it covered all the requirements we had and especially the historical significance to our roots and the country that we wanted to involve in the creation of the brand, Bulgaria.
The Dulo clan (or House of Dulo), is the name of the clan from which the earliest Bulgarian Dynasty descended. It represented our ancestors that lived on our lands before us, fought and won many battles, brave warriors. It had a very powerful charge in my mind, was short, easy to remember and pronounce. We discussed it, thought about it for a few days and decided not to overthink it. It is going to be our actions while building this business and relationships, that determine what people associate with the name, not the name itself. Few people knew what Google or Nike mean, before the companies were successful.
So, we had the name, we just had to think of a logo to go along with it. We knew we wanted it to be a very clean and simple symbol, that can bring an additional meaning (e.g. the Nike swoosh), and can be used separately, without the word DULO around it.
The Dulo clan symbol was an interesting option, but it has unfortunately become a symbol of nationalistic movements and we also wanted to make our own unique design not completely copy it, so we stripped away much of the original symbol and what was left was simply ||. Two parallel lines that were the simplicity we were looking for.
We also thought of a meaning that we can give to the two lines and we saw that it kind of looks like a runway. We decided from that point on that we would brand is as “the runway” giving the feeling of flight, freedom and endless possibilities.
When we discussed a brand slogan and social media handles, we couldn’t really pinpoint a slogan that we both liked. Regarding social media handles, “dulo” by itself would be usually taken, so we were discussing the options — “duloapparel”, “dulowear” or “weardulo”. Wear sounded a bit cleaner compared to apparel, so we thought to go with wear. The two options left were “dulowear”, or “weardulo”. We thought the second option — “weardulo” sounds more actionable and proactive, so we decided on it and created accounts for “weardulo” on all platforms we were planning to use.
Our next task was to start work on the logo.
