in Small Business
Issue No. 1 - July/August 2001
Wava Corporation
New Name, New Opportunities
When Ivan Steed of Wava Corporation called in—business to wave the flag for his new product, Expand—a—sign, an innovative display apparatus, conversation brought out a deeper story.
Formerly trading as The Flag Centre, in Goodwood Road, Wayville, Wava is a survivor.
For some years The Flag Centre was effectively the sole supplier of the flags that hung from light standards in Adelaide. The flags changed regularly and the work represented a key income stream for The Flag Centre — quality was kept high. But that stream shut down when the officer commissioning the work retired. “Suddenly, there were 12 other people bidding for the work, not just us,” Ivan says.
Faced with the sudden need to rebuild turnover, Ivan took a frightening step and changed his business name. “The Flag Centre name just didn’t represent the ‘other half’ of the showroom floor,” he said, meaning the display materials other than flags which he had been marketing for years.
Sure enough, a letter drop to the client base from Wava Corporation caused immediate confusion. “I was getting calls from regular clients: ‘What’s this Wava? Why did you change?’. It was scary — when you do something like that, everybody assumes you must be going broke. 2000 was a year of keeping everybody assured that we were still the same company, doing the same work.”
Persistence with the change has paid unexpected dividends. Ivan gained sales opportun...
