Know Why They Love You

Ready to scale? Take care not to lose sight of what attracted people to your brand in the first place.

- Boyd Farrow

Your products are racking up five-star reviews on Amazon. Your services are bewitching Yelp. Street artists are appropriating your logo. Clearly, the next thing on your to-do list is to scale as fast as possible. And then maybe buy a Caribbean island, from where you can oversee your brand’s world domination.

But before you tap Richard Branson for his real estate agent’s number, you may want to consider the other beloved brands—from Firestone Tire & Rubber to Laura Ashley to Nokia—that have stumbled over the years. These are all companies that, in their haste to grow, lost sight of why people liked them in the first place.

How can you avoid their fate?

“It’s not just about growing your business, but how you grow,” says Seth Gaffney, of Preacher, a hip Austin, Tex.– based creative company.

First off, Gaffney says, have a plan. Technology enables many startups to expand before they know who they are or what they are about. “Many firms are tech platforms with brands built around them. There’s no brand clarity or direction. Without those foundations, a company can scale quickly but grow poorly,” he says. (See “Problem Solvers,” page 30, for a good example of this.)