Building a Branded House in the Bearings Industry

Backstory

After three companies in the industrial bearings market merged, DKY helped create and roll out a master brand to unite and elevate their expanded product line and engineering expertise for customers.

The bearings and transmission parts industry is a crowded space. As part of its long-term growth strategy, P.T. International (PTI) based in Charlotte, NC, acquired IPTCI Bearings in Minnesota, and LMS Bearings in Colorado, to break through the crowd and better serve customers.

Early in the process, PTI brought in DKY as a brand marketing partner to help create a unified value proposition and brand strategy that would amplify the unique products and services of each company, and bridge a cohesive customer experience to differentiate Solve from its competitors.

Today, PTI, IPTCI and LMS are united under a new service brand: Solve Industrial Motion Group.

Deliverables

Brand Development
Brand Identity and Design
Website Strategy and Design
Collateral Design
Email Marketing
Social Media
Public Relations

Set of 3D renders of inter-looped bearings

Process

With PTI’s business plan as a starting point, DKY conducted a brand audit to understand the complete picture – products, messaging and digital footprints – of PTI, IPTCI, LMS and their primary competitor set.

Next, DKY facilitated a series of brand development sessions with key leadership from each entity. Based on these discussions, vital building blocks for the new, yet-to-be-named brand were identified. DKY then created a brand architecture model, and tested brand positioning options with select customers from each entity. Following this valuable feedback, a new brand strategy and positioning was declared. It was now time to name the brand.

Naming a new company is not easy. In this case, the task required discovery of a unique name that was reflective of the brand promise and free of trademark entanglements – with an available, easy and memorable URL. Ultimately, the winner was: Solve Industrial Motion Group (solveindustrial.com).

Next came the design effort to bring this new brand to life: the company logo, brand fonts, color palette, visual identity, and brand standards. Since the Solve brand would be new to the marketplace, it was important to visually link the three separate companies together under the new brand. An interim website was built to help accomplish this.

Essentially DKY helped transition the organization from a house of brands to a branded house. Over time, PTI, IPTCI and LMS will become known product brands in the Solve family.

After months of back-end work and preparation, DKY collaborated with the Solve leadership team on an internal and external rollout. First, a virtual presentation built awareness and energy among all staff members. A few days later, an external launch with targeted email communications to customers, distributors and other supply chain partners, along with a press release and social media engagement was pushed to the public and manufacturing industries.

Goals

Early in the process the Solve leadership team briefed DKY on its growth-by-acquisition business strategy to help the team identify key brand and marketing goals for the partnership:

Develop a new brand and go-to-market strategy to drive business goals
Design a master brand to unite three independent product brands
Establish a clear value proposition to differentiate Solve from competitors
Launch the new Solve brand with an integrated, multi-channel communications campaign

“DKY was instrumental determining the right long-term brand strategy for us. Not only did they provide insight into best practices, but they guided us through the decision process, prioritization and execution. DKY is a key partner for Solve!”

Michael M., Solve Industrial Motion Group

Key Takeaways

In the end, the collaborative and cordial partnership between the Solve executive team and DKY members led to an energetic, powerful new brand. The thoughtful development strategy, with input from many constituents, ensured a smooth brand transformation. DKY was able to demonstrate its multi-disciplinary approach with subject matter experts who individually contributed to a greater, wholistic effort resulting in a successful market launch.

25%

Web traffic from paid search campaign

Results

DKY created and helped launch a new brand in the niche industrial bearings and power transmission components parts industry. But that’s just the beginning. DKY continues to work closely with the Solve team to grow awareness of its brand, product lines, services and people.

Branded House Strategy
3-to-1 – three independent bearings companies moved under one master brand.
New Brand Identity
22 logo designs presented over 9 months of development.
New Website
2,420 users visited the website 3,545 times in first four months.
Internal Launch Event
58 employees from PTI, IPTCI and LMS were first to learn about new brand.
Targeted Email Marketing Campaign
10,325 customers, distributors and supply chain partners introduced to Solve IMG.
Media Outreach
10 trade industry stories were secured and a press release distributed via PR Newswire.