Brand and Business

I was listening to American Public Media's Marketplace last week when a story about bankrupt stores caught my attention. The headline: "Bankrupt Stores Can Still Sell Their Name." Forget that to be grammatically correct (not that I don't like to break the grammar rules myself) there should be an s on the end of name. No, what really made me smile was the fact that someone paid $34 million for bankrupt Sharper Image simply for the equity in the brand name. While Sharper Image's business practices weren't good enough to keep it afloat, they'd done a decent job of imbuing the name with goodwill in the form of brand. The same is true for Linens N' Things, a retailer name that was purchased two weeks ago for $1 million. Just the name.

What's the moral of the story? I guess it's that these and other marketers worked – at least early on, before they panicked and did dumb things to their brands – to build strong brands and maintain their integrity. And in the end after the panic settled into acceptance of the inevitable there was still at least a little value to squeeze out of the businesses. Look for Sharper Image and Linens N' Things branded products on retailer shelves near you.