Mastering the Rebrand: Tips, Tricks & More for Business Owners Starting Anew

The team at Revival House, formerly known as Mingle and later Studio M Kitchen & Bath, shares insights and lessons learned while rebranding the firm

Project photos by Scott Amundson || Portraits by Chelsie Lopez  

Revival House, the most recent iteration of Studio M Kitchen & Bath (formerly Mingle), turns to its 13 years in the kitchen and bath industry as its new owner, interior designer Bre Perrigo, learns the ins and outs of helping the new-yet-not business find its footing in the Twin Cities design scene. Rebranding a company is never an easy feat, yet it’s sometimes crucial for the life and longevity of a brand long loved. Here, the Revival House team shares lessons learned and challenges conquered on the six-month road to reinvention.

Get the Team (And Your Clients!) on Board

“The biggest thing is making sure everyone on the team is on the same page,” says Perrigo, who, for the past three years, worked as a designer for Studio M Kitchen & Bath. As a team, she explains, “You have to reflect on what your company has offered and look at the projects you’ve done. It’s important to look at the struggles that have been consistent: How can you address them and how can they be resolved?”

Perrigo adds that rebranding while also fully involved in myriad projects and current clients requires upfront, in-advance communication. Informing past clients is equally important. “[It’s about] a seamless experience for everybody,” she says. “You’re constantly picking things up in front of you and behind you as you go.”

Have Patience

“There’s a lot of patience that goes into the rebranding, and nothing is immediate,” Perrigo says. Certain aspects of the rebrand take longer than others, she explains, especially SEO and Google search-related aspects of business ownership that are heavily relied upon for leads and inquiries. “SEO is something that doesn’t change immediately,” says Kayla Hoem, marketing director at Revival House. “Everything on the internet talks to each other, and when you try and tell Google your name has changed, Google looks at Yelp and says, ‘Are you sure your name has changed?’ We just don’t have control over [those kinds of things].”

Hoem also suggests leaving ample time to prepare your online forms, change over your branding, and duplicate your website so you can “click a button and it goes live” when you’re ready to launch. “[Also important] is using that extra time to look and create a list of everything that’s going to have to change so things aren’t popping up and people aren’t asking you ‘Why is this still this and why is this still that?’

Hoem says a fully dedicated marketing firm might be able to get things changed quicker, but she emphasizes the importance of setting the expectation—especially if you’re doing it on your own—that it’s going to take some time and you’re going to keep revisiting things.

Marketing Matters

Putting energy into your online presence and social media strategy throughout, leading up to, and after the transition is worth the investment, and one way you can do this is by “working smarter, not harder,” Perrigo says. She suggests relying on and repurposing older, preexisting content as you navigate branding changes. “For an interior design firm, we actually create quite a bit of content,” Perrigo explains. “We have our blog, so relying on old content and going back and rebranding [it], is helpful. We have some posts we could just change a couple words, but we have others [that we need to go in] and change more. It gives us the opportunity to use that content again instead of having to create more content.”

Although different types of content (short-form versus long-form; interactive versus not; etc.) perform in different ways on Revival House’s social media platforms, posting consistently is what the team finds to be a critical component in keeping their evolving brand at the forefront. “What performs the best is hard to say because it changes so often,” Hoem says. “We’ve gotten a lot of interactions with some blogs we wrote and turned into carousel posts, as well as reels. I was a bit surprised [because] the images were more text heavy.”

Lean Into the Next Generation

Kelly Davert, general manager, credits the younger ownership and team for some of Revival’s rebrand success. “Thirteen years ago, when we started this venture as Mingle, we were all pretty much the same age,” she recalls. “Now, the new generation is taking over and it’s exciting. It’s fun to work with a younger mindset—they’re savvy when it comes to not only all the marketing and social media but they’re also better at using the tools that are out there. … We’re all looking at it through a different lens.”

Prepare for the Unseen & Uncontrollable

The things often out of your control, like card services or merchant services where your clients can pay online, are often the biggest hurdles, Davert says. “If we had known getting that changed over and redirected to the new bank accounts was going to be this challenging, we would’ve started it six months before the sale went through!” she says, jokingly.

Additionally, as a new business owner, Perrigo points to “unseen,” backend checklist items—such as employee benefits or insurance—that are particularly challenging to switch over and update. “It feels like you’re juggling maybe 50 different balls in the air, and you’re waiting to knock some of them out. There are a lot of steps for each one.”

Rely on Those Who Came Before You

“We are very lucky because we had a lot of expertise of the previous owner, who has mentored us through a lot of this,” Perrigo says. “I’m learning new things every single day. I didn’t just walk in the door and know how to do everything. Honestly, what has gotten me through this is that, at the end of the day, I’m still doing exactly what I love to do, and I’m involved in all of my projects—keeping those moving is keeping everything else moving, too.”

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