Comment by BVAA CEO Rob Bartlett

BVAA’s most visited resource on our BVAA website is the ‘Search the BVAA Member Directory’.  It is a repository for member Company, Product and Brand information.

Here, some companies only list only their current brands - which is a huge mistake! 

Don’t forget legacy brands!

Not listing legacy brands oddly assumes the client has maintained an intricate knowledge of the myriads of brand and consolidation movements in the industry over decades, and that they dive straight into a search knowing precisely who superseded whom and with what. 

This is of course nonsense.  Most people need leading to that understanding, so listing your old and lapsed brands with BVAA will lead clients to your door and your new and likely enhanced product, not someone else’s! 

Do list ALL the new brands too!

Companies can be pretty poor when it comes to listing all their current brands.  As an example, I looked at a selection of articles for this issue, and all-bar-one were citing brands that were currently not listed in our database for the company!  This is poor brand management – as a member you may be losing out massively as a result.

Brand-tracking has been an issue that BVAA has been resolving for enquirers for decades, because BVAA’s database is the repository of an enormous amount of information about valve industry companies, their brands and their products.  It is part of this database that is decanted to our website search facility – which gets thousands of hits! 

Why do we keep this old information?

Companies and brands can go through multiple owners over the years, until eventually only a few grey-haired souls remember their origin - and critically - who owns them now.  For example, the first such company taken over when I joined BVAA has since gone through 5 separate owners!

Typically, our industry’s products can last a long time, indeed a very long time.  I routinely receive articles proudly stating how long a product has been in unattended service.  When it does come time to replace it, the customer has developed a firm sense of brand-loyalty and would, understandably, prefer what they believe will be a hassle-free, like-for-like and similarly long-lived replacement.   But frustratingly, they cannot source a seller.

Owners of brands are sometimes completely unaware of the power that a brand can have with a customer, and neglect to make the vital connections for them.  This needlessly drives them to competitors, losing revenue and despoiling the loyalty that was hard won.  Why give your competition that chance?

Plus, we know that some of our Desktop Exhibition hosts review the Member Directory information when selecting exhibitors, so you can easily increase your chances of being invited to those too. 

Help yourself!

Ensure that all current brands, products and services are included in your entry on the BVAA website (which members can of course update themselves).  But also include legacy ones as well, to entice people to your current offer.

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