Jeff Bennett's Blog

Last month I posted that Swaptree had acquired Swap.com.   This is a big deal for a young company operating in a developing category.  Our goal is to lead this category.  What better name and domain for the company other than the category name itself.  Today we made the switch of the domain and we updated our logo on our site.  A big day for swapping!

Why did we do it?

First, the essence of what our members do when they are on our site is very simple, they “swap.” We are committed to continuing to grow our platform for books, music, movies and games and we have plans to expand into other swap categories. Swap.com is the root of our current brand…and speaks to something bigger which is what we aspire to.

Second, brand building is very challenging and can be very expensive.  Gone are the “Mad Men” days of creating a positioning and spending lots of dough to reinforce it.  Today it is about combining incredible customer experience, domain name and branding activity…that can efficiently be positioned in many channels.  The experience and brand have to be memorable to enable success breaking through the clutter in the media.  The holy grail is creating a chance at viral or word of mouth.  Swap.com is short, actionable and memorable…it should greatly enhance our brand building initiatives.

Lastly, consumers engage in swapping for many reasons.  A common theme is saving money.  The visual that seems universally accepted for “sales,” “discounts,” “markdowns,” “tag sales,” are those colorful dots that indicate how much a consumer  can save if they buy a particular item.  A logo has to befit the experience of a service.  With the help of some of the best branding minds on the planet, we embarked on a fun and exhilarating journey to create a logo that would best fit our company and plans.  With all of this in mind we created  our new “swap dot” logo to serve as the emblem of Swap.com.

I am a firm believer that short, descriptive and action oriented words…can become great brands in this day and age.  We are a dedicated team that wants to do all that we can to serve our members and lead our emerging category.  Today is step one in what will become a series of releases to improve the customer experience, add desired functionality, expand into more categories and offer new swapping services.  We are harnessing the suggestions and direction of our members and the market to navigate forward.  So we are thrilled to embark on the process of transitioning to Swap.com.

Onward.