As 3Eye continues to mature, we’re making some enhancements to our branding – slight updates to our logo and color scheme, a new website, and new digital content…for starters. To celebrate, I thought it would be fun to look back and share the story behind the name of our company.
I get asked a lot, “How did 3Eye get its name?” My team has become well-versed at telling the story, and as we grow, I don’t always get the opportunity to tell everyone individually. When I started the company, I knew a couple of things:
1. Our broad strategy was around the distribution of mobile technology. We set out to focus on verticals where there is high concentration of critical business functions being performed in the field.
2. In this industry, change is inevitable. I didn’t want to pick a name that pegged us to one particular type of technology or industry, only to regret it later.
I knew I wanted something that sounded generically “techy”. I started brainstorming, both alone and with friends. With every new idea, I was constantly checking to see if the domain was registered. Much to my dismay, just about everything I could think of was already spoken for. Then I read somewhere that there were no available domain names left using a two-word combination from the English language. Wait…every two-word combination in the English language has already been registered as a domain?!?!
Now, I have no idea if this is true; my guess is that it probably isn’t, but at the time it prompted me to approach this challenge from a new angle. I started thinking of numbers. My first thought was about the number 3. It’s a lucky number in Chinese. And a triangle, which has three sides, is the strongest geometric shape. I started to think we might be able to do something with a logo around these concepts.
One thing that remained constant from conception to current-day is my view on a distributor’s role in the channel. Distribution should act as a channel steward and enabler of technology and sales. Simply put, we watch over our partners to help them achieve success. We keep an “eye” on our partner. Aha! 3Eye…that sounded catchy. I checked the domain 3eye.com…it was parked. Bummer. 3eyetech.com was available. That was the shortest domain yet, so I jumped on it and 3Eye was officially born. Shortly after, I would be offered the 3eye.com domain in a sale, but passed on it. (Oh, the joys of bootstrapping a startup!)
Next up was our logo….
Now that I settled on a name, I moved into designing our logo. My super talented friend helped me out and we came up with the concept of the interlocking 3 and E.
The joining of the two characters represents partnership. The space between represents the channel and the flow of products and services as they travel from vendor to user.
When I look back, I’m reminded of how proud I am of our logo. I feel the concept still resonates very strongly today. I’m also reminded of how lucky I am to have creative friends who were willing to help (Jill, I hope you are reading this!). And of course, we wouldn’t be where we are today without our customers and partners.
So there you have it. A real world example of how a name and logo came to be.