Please give a warm welcome to Robert and Stacia Guzzo, founders of Handcrafted HoneyBee. This energetic #ahasmember business team has generously offered to share their recent, dramatic rebranding journey with our community.
Robert and Stacia address issues like maker burnout, incorrect customer targeting, and the process of finding that sweet spot where a company's mission and its ideal customers collide.
Enjoy, and share your questions and comments below!
The entire series can be found here:
read the prologue here
Part 1 (where they talk about their need to change) here
Part 2 (why it takes awhile to get a rebrand right)
Part 3 (what it's like finding a designer)
Part 4 (creating compelling content)
Part 5 (creating and using your brand guide)
Part 6 (creating compelling packaging)
Part 7 (juggling two brands at once)
Part 8 (building a homepage)
Part 9 (launching their new site)
Epilogue (why going through a rebrand helps you love your brand more)
AND read their designer's advice on getting better with graphic design here
We were struggling. Everything felt like an uphill fight. But it’s supposed to be hard, right?
We really wanted things to work. We felt like if we believed in it enough, we could overcome anything.
But it just wasn’t going to happen.
It was time for my wife and I to break up with our brand.
And once we set out to discover our authentic brand identity, all of the things that felt difficult before–drafting a business plan, developing topics for our blog and newsletter, defining our mission, articulating our value–just seemed to fall into place.
It was like falling in love and looking back on that old relationship with a really, really great person that was totally wrong for you. You know the one I’m talking about.
A Window Into One Business’ Rebrand Story
In these posts, I want to share my perspectives and experiences with the massive on-going rebrand of Handcrafted HoneyBee (the business founded by my wife Stacia and I).
Everyone’s rebrand story is different. This is ours. But I hope that some of the insights that we gained from this process will benefit others reading it.
If you are struggling with your current brand–trying to find your voice, striving to figure out why your message is not connecting with your audience, seeing that your business goals are not aligned with kinds of customers you are attracting–then this story should offer you some hope. Because we were there. Oh yes, we were there big time.
If you have ever wondered what a top-to-bottom rebrand of a product-based business looks like–labels, packaging, the product descriptions, the website–then read to see how we tackled it.
If you have ever been confused about how to bring your audience with you for their brand–and actually turn them into your best source of market research and your most ardent brand loyalists–then you’ll see what we did (and soon I’ll know whether we were successful or not).
If you’re a design professional who has always wondered what exactly the client is thinking during the whole process, from discovery to delivery, then hopefully our story will give you some insights.
Here’s how this will go. Each chapter will cover a different aspect of our rebrand journey.
Rebrand: A Love Story in 9 Parts
- But Baby, I Can Change: Why Rebrand?
- Getting Ready for the Big Date: Prep Work
- Matchmaker, Matchmaker: Finding the Designer
- Conversation Starters: It’s All About Content
- Delivering the Goods: The Brand Guide
- It’s What’s Outside That Counts: The Packaging
- If a Brand Falls in the Forest: Content Marketing the “Launch”
- Shacking Up: Building a Home(page)
- Housewarming: Launching the New Site
Okay…that’s it for now. Next up: why in the world did we decide to change everything? It turns out that it was changing already, and we had only just begun to realize it.
