The next era of Bluevine: A look inside our rebrand
A message from Eyal Lifshitz, Co-founder and CEO of Bluevine:
I come from a long line of business owners—but when it came time to follow in my father’s and grandfather’s footsteps and start my own company, I took the entrepreneurial spirit I had inherited from them and went one step further. I started a company committed to serving other small business owners and entrepreneurs as they navigated the challenges of managing their finances. Having seen these challenges play out firsthand I saw an opportunity in the market to create a solution.
With that goal in mind, Bluevine was born in 2013 and we’ve been living up to that mission for nearly ten years, serving as an ally and trusted financial partner for small business owners across the U.S. As we look forward to the next era of Bluevine, we’re transforming our brand in a way that reflects where we’ve come from, how we’ve grown, and what lies ahead for our company and this community.
Why now?
When we started Bluevine, we were laser-focused on creating superior financial products and services that put small businesses first. We’ve never lost that focus.
I couldn’t be prouder of what we’ve built to date—the team we’ve put together, the businesses we’ve supported, and the milestones we’ve hit. For nearly a decade, we have been evolving and growing alongside the small business community that we serve. As we reflected on our growth and our roadmap for the future, we recognized that Bluevine was at a pivotal moment, primed for change.
What makes a strong brand?
What became clear to me from this process is that a well constructed brand represents a promise with clear value and a unique perspective and is spread through every aspect of a business, from recruiting to customer-facing product experiences. It should connect on an emotional level with all of its audiences—customers, employees, investors—and show up consistently and authentically in everything that it does.
Through every iteration of the rebranding process, we sought out that promise of connection and empathy with our customers while also capturing their unique spirit of ambition and growth that is also reflected in all of us.
Our approach: Listening to our customers
We are committed to our mission and vision, which have been foundational to Bluevine and our growth from the start. Our mission is to empower small businesses with innovative banking designed just for them. Our vision? To enable a better future for small business owners. Together, they act as our guideposts in all that we do, and with this rebrand, it was no different. We had to stay true to what we’ve accomplished on behalf of the small business community and the pride we’ve built within our organization, all while reflecting our ambitions as we continue to expand and innovate on our offerings.
This process gave us the opportunity to rethink how we put our customers and their stories at the forefront. Similar to how we build our products, we wanted to understand what they needed and how we could better deliver to build even more trust and value in our relationships. So we went right to the source. Their perspectives helped us uncover the key insights that drove the foundation of our strategy, and validated our decisions along the way, whether it was the need for a financial partner they could trust or one that offered a holistic suite of services.
“All large banks are the same. If I could find a smaller partner that did everything I wanted, I would move in a heartbeat.”
— Jacob Krupnick, Founder of Wild Communication
Small details, big impact
We—like our customers—know that there’s nothing small about small business. We also believe that small details can make a big difference when it comes to a brand . This belief heavily informed our rebrand as we began to translate our strategy into our visual expression.
Take our new logo for example. At first glance, you may notice some of the obvious changes: a more modern typeface, the incorporation of shapes inspired by our name, and the use of smooth lines that exude a sense of friendliness and approachability. But for us, it is the smaller details that make our new logo a better representation of our mission.
Bluevine was built on empowering entrepreneurs with not just the big financial tools, but also the small interactions of service they need to grow their businesses with confidence. To reflect that, we designed our new logo and brand symbol from three core shapes that work together to create a thoughtful, modern and modular aesthetic. More importantly, this design approach mirrors what we are to our customers–a system of building blocks they can trust to help them achieve their goals and create something truly remarkable.
Our refreshed color palette is another example of our focus on the small details. At face value, our new selection of primary and secondary colors feels intuitive, with a strong focus on signature blues (we are Bluevine, of course) and a smattering of vibrant red, orange, yellow, and green hues to accent. But color has an exceptional way of evoking emotion, so we carefully selected each hue to represent our goals and what we hope to mean to our customers.
Getting our brand blue right was crucial. In a category washed with blue, we wanted to embrace a strong hue that balanced the essence of our tech-forward and innovative products with trust and security–two incredibly significant tenants of our brand. Our expressive palette, with fresh greens and warm inviting tones reflect nature, growth, and the confident and dynamic energy of the small business owners we serve.
The small details proved to have a big impact in translating our commitment to our customers into a meaningful brand identity, and the foundation on which we are positioning Bluevine for the future.
What’s next?
While the majority of elements immediately impacted by this new brand are visual—our logo, our website, our communications, etc.—this rebrand goes deeper. As we continue revolutionizing small business banking with superior services, innovative products, and thoughtful updates to our existing offering, we want a brand that feels as future-proof as our roadmap is. This rebrand is about creating something that accurately reflects where we’re headed, which is to a more streamlined, simplified, and modern system of banking solutions fit for always-on business owners.
One of the biggest reasons that we do what we do is because we realized that the system of trust between small businesses and financial institutions is broken. Unfortunately, it’s also one of the most vital relationships for the success and survival of small businesses. Bluevine’s commitment to building better financial services that put small business owners first was our first step in remedying that system. Our brand is a promise to continue showing up for small businesses and building a brighter financial future together.