Trustworthy companies: When brand and business are interchangeable

If you want to be believed as a company and as a business leader, your business and your brand need to be interchangeable. Jay Steinfeld, founder and CEO of Blinds.com, talks about how they make their brand true in their day-to-day operations.

Robin: Hello, and welcome to this addition of Brandonomics, an inside look at top brands and their marketing strategies. I am Robin Tooms, VP of Strategy of Savage Brands, and my guest again today is Jay Steinfeld, founder and CEO of Blinds.com. So Jay, so glad you’re back on Brandonomics.

Jay: Great to be here, Robin.

Robin: Jay, thank you so much for spending time with me to talk about what’s made the Blinds.com brand successful. I want to hear about how you see the brand as kind of driving the company and vice versa.

Jay: Branding is not about a veneer or polish on something that it isn’t. If you are one thing to your customers and another thing to your employees, then your employees knows that you’re lying, and to be true to your brand you have to be true to your employees in what your message is. If you’re going to say one thing to the public, and then internally you’re saying completely different things, then you can’t even be trusted among your employees. So then, when you want to enact programs and think about the future, they have to trust that what you’re saying is true. So it is very important that whatever you’re saying is absolutely, certainly what you’re thinking and what you believe in.

Robin: Right. So give me an example, because obviously in this case you’re saying a brand is not window dressing, part of the fun, but in this case it is integral to you. So how does that kind of reflect in your operations, and in the way you may be innovating internally?

Jay: Well, our two main core values of four are to improve continuously and experiment without fear of failure. So the way we plan, the way we think, the way we tackle anything we do is in an agile development, sort of discovery-based way, so that when we think about how we want to enact a program, we know there’s going to be some flaws, and we’re okay with that. In fact, we expect it, we look for it, and look for ways to improve so that way people don’t feel punished or even afraid of telling people about what’s going wrong. In fact, they’ll tell you in advance, because they want to be sure that it is the best thing that it could be, because they want it to be the best it can be themselves.

Robin: Well, I love that story. I’m glad to hear of a company such as yourself thinking brand and business is interchangeable.

Jay: Absolutely.

Robin: Well, wonderful. This has been another addition of Brandonomics, an inside look at top brands and their marketing strategies.

 

Blinds.com is the largest online window covering store in the world. At its heart, it is a passionate customer service and marketing company that connects the community to home décor trends and high quality window coverings. It’s been featured in numerous magazine, newspaper and radio publications.

https://www.blinds.com/