What Good Branding Can Do
Pink’s Window Services - a window cleaning service based out of Austin, TX is the perfect example that good branding mixed with smart business decisions allows you to stand out in a crowded, monotonous space.
Rich in vintage ephemera, this lifestyle-forward brand takes a typically boring service and flips it on its head.
Cultural Significance
Window cleaning, plumbing, electricians, gardeners, painters, and all the other trades are not known to be flashy, fun, trendy, let alone, trend-setting, but here Pink’s is.
Culturally, Pink’s development is coinciding with the investment and increased attention towards the trades. For the past 30 - 50 years, they were largely ignored. Millennials and Gen Z were pushed to go to college seeking white collar careers. Meanwhile, the original Boomer generation who developed these trades, worked their respective careers and built a living quietly.
With a smaller amount of people coming into the trades, and larger amount exiting, a huge gap is forming. More opportunities are present than ever for stable trade-related work amongst Millenials and Gen Z. The founders themselves say, “Pink’s was born out of Brandon and Carter's shared desire to bring dignity back in to the blue collar service industry.” Even venture capitalists themselves are rushing towards these small mom & pops, buying them out for millions of dollars. The shift is starting to show.
What’s interesting about Pink’s is that these two founders blended that stable, expected trade work with the “lifestyle” branding we have come to know. They’re really doing something fresh.
Good Business
A driver for Pink’s creation was the frustration the founders felt when hiring trade workers. I think we’ve all experienced long delays and random visits within a very large window of time that stop us from doing what we had planned for that day.
Pink’s is promising a fixed start and end time for example. They’re going after the aspects of the trade industries that we’ve grown used to but do not like, and turning that into a point of differentiation. That’s good business.
On to the actual branding…
The logo, color palette, typeface, mascot, uniforms, etc. have clearly been developed to fit into this classic, vintage-inspired brand. It’s nostalgic - looking and acting like the past.
The name is short and sweet and fits perfectly with the colors they’ve chosen for the brand. Obvious, but delightful.
They’ve also gone as far as using vintage uniforms - a style known by all. Plus, it doesn’t hurt that these uniforms are trending at the moment.
They are also appealing to a specific demographic. Their work force seems to be made up of Millennial and Gen Z men. While we all want more gender equality, it is known that women are still primary in house care and the primary users of social media. This aspect of branding is no accident. *In branding and in business, the choice to appeal to a specific demographic is key in helping define your business and therefore your success. They have done this perfectly.
Overall, this brand is rich in depth and quality in a space that was so desperate for it, an aspirational mix that the best of us try to accomplish when building a brand or business. Kudos to the Pink’s team - I look forward to seeing what they do next.
