Change is eternal. Recently, we shared the exciting news of the move to our new office at 1250-777 Dunsmuir Street. Now I would like to share an even bigger change to Two Tall Totems itself. We have spent ample time examining our current identity which is a very different creature to the company we founded close to a decade ago.
We’ve never been one to rely on sales and marketing. We didn’t (and still don’t) have a dedicated sales team, and for the longest time no marketing team. Our approach has always been to focus on building the best products possible utilizing best practices. This philosophy has brought us monumental success so far and a ton of referrals, which our business is built on. Our brand and identity, for the most part, was an afterthought that has developed organically alongside our business operations.
As we’ve continued to grow, however, our technical capabilities have increased significantly. As a consequence, our breadth of services gradually expanded…to the point where we were no longer the same company we were five, three or even one year ago. And so…we realized it was necessary to rethink how we define ourselves as a company.
Before I go on a spiel about what’s on the horizon, we’d like to take a moment to honour our past.
Indulge me to pay homage to what has been our identity over the past 8 wonderful years. We’ve grown a lot as a company; more than we could’ve ever imagined at the beginning as a four-person team, in an office the size of a closet.
As Two Tall Totems, we put together our first desks, had our first scavenger hunt, got our first board game, weathered some storms that almost sank the ship, landed our first big contract and won our first award. But things weren’t always easy. Startup life is often glorified. The good times were amazing, but the road bumps in a startup are rough, and oftentimes devastating.
In our earlier, less experienced days, there were times when a single bad client refusing to pay almost shut us down. David, Josephine and I went MANY months without taking a paycheck to make sure the team was taken care of first. I have an unwavering belief in putting the family first, and this is something I will never compromise on. I knew it then, but it’s even clearer now in hindsight how important it is to hold true to these values. It took a ton of hard work, and let’s face it, luck, to make it into the 10% of startups that avoid dying a horrible death.
Personally, I will miss our beloved characters we once used to represent us. The questions asking if we were a software firm or a daycare have been noted but moving forward I may sneak one or two of them in somewhere when our Marketing Manager isn’t looking (I hope Pauline doesn’t read this).
First off, we have a new name; one that’s less of a tongue twister. When we started the process of rebranding, we knew we didn’t want to forget where we came from. Since many of you already refer to us as “TTT”, the decision was easy. The next part, however, took a little more thought.
The most critical part of this whole process was defining who we are. Thankfully, we already had a pretty clear picture, we just needed the words to make it official. After some exploration and discovery, we found the three words that described us perfectly. These three words went on to inform the entirety of our branding decisions. Let me share with you their significance and why they mean so much to us.