What is branding?

To me, it is the mental image that you have of a company and their products.

• When you think Volvo cars, you think “safety”.
• When you think Google, you think “search engine”.
• When you think Star Bamboo, you think “bamboo flooring”.

This brand promise is easy to fulfil when the company has only one core product. What happens when the company expands their portfolio of offerings?

Google has gone from search to email, RSS reader, news groups, blogs, photo software, 3D images etc. According to Seth Godin, there is the danger of brand ubiquity.

When your brand is lots of things (like AOL became) then the expectations were all over the place and the emotional resonance started to fade.

This is something we pay close attention to. That is why as we expand our product portfolio, we have to maintain a common theme.

Besides bamboo flooring, we also have:

• bamboo veneer
• bamboo panels
• bamboo furniture
• bamboo decking
• natural flooring oils
• bamboo chopping boards

Which is the odd one out?

That is a trick question because the common theme is not “bamboo products”, but “eco-friendly products”.

We made a deliberate decision to obtain the distributorship of Timberex, a range of eco-friendly natural flooring oils for South East Asia.

It allows us to expand beyond bamboo products, yet maintain our brand promise at the same time.

So the next time you think Star Bamboo, think “Eco-friendly”.