Warehouse Stationery has recently unveiled a complete branding make-over. And what a brilliant make-over it is.
Old Branding
The old branding wasn’t bad. It was clear, straight forward, it worked. It wasn’t one of the brands like New World that I looked at at and though, “That’s so old! The really need to make it over”. But having said that, with the new fresh brand launched, I look back at the old branding and think, “Oh! What a great change!”
The New Branding
The new branding is very well done. A key “ws” icon has been created, which they are already using as a logo on it’s own in a number of their advertising flyers.
It is eye-catching, with a contemporary sans-serif font. It’s still blue, but a lighter, brighter blue.
The four coloured dots under the “ws” refer to the four areas of business that they are now summarising their services under. This is used elsewhere in a fuller branding, including in-store signage:
Branding History
1991 – The first Warehouse Stationery opened in 1991 by Stephen Tindall, founder of The Warehouse, and was originally known as “The Warehouse Stationery”. The logo was red, just like The Warehouse.
1996 – The Warehouse Stationery was rebranded “Warehouse Stationery”, dropping “The” and the a new blue corporate colour was introduced to distinguish Warehouse Stationery from The Warehouse. The logo looked like this:
2006 – Warehouse Stationery launched their new brand logo – which is the one that has just been replaced. It was a significant step up from the 1996 version in terms of being clean and modern.
2013 – And that brings us to the newly launched modern logo:
Warehouse Stationery head of marketing Cathy Atkins has said that the cost of the rebrand and rolling it out across their 61 stores is commercially sensitive, but did say that it is a multi-million dollar rebrand.
The Domain Squatter Problem
With all of that money to spend on marketing, one key thing they haven’t yet done is secure the mis-spelling of their domain name -www.warehousestationary.co.nz (‘ary’ instead of ‘ery’).
A Palmerston North domain squatter with the company name Progressive Solutions purchased the domain back in 2011, and have a standard ads-filled landing page on the domain. With such a valid mis-spelling of their name, I would recommend Warehouse Stationery demand that the squatters hand over the domain! Or if not hand over, at least come to a purchase agreement, for the thousands of people, like myself, who misspell “stationary” instead of “stationery”!
Then again, perhaps having the squatter site there is helping improve New Zealander’s spelling. I for one now remember the difference between “stationery” and “stationary”!