USA. DFASS Group tonight unveiled its new corporate identity and mission statement, as the Miami-based airline-to-airport travel retailer was rebranded 3Sixty.
The company, founded by local entrepreneur Bernard (‘Benny’) Klepach with a single airline duty free account in 1987, presented its new identity, logo and vision at a packed gathering of business partners, company management and selected media (The Moodie Davitt Report and Travel Markets Insider) at Miami’s historic Alfred I. Dupont Building.
[Look out next week for an extensive e-Zine feature on the new-look company, including extensive interviews with Benny Klepach, Executive Vice Chairman Roberto Graziani and others.]
The launch has been the subject of an extensive teaser campaign on The Moodie Davitt Report.com over recent weeks. 3Sixty (click here to view the new website at http://3sixtydutyfree.com/) is a reference to the global reach and full spectrum of services and goods offered by the business.
It also underscores the company’s breadth of operations and strategic partnerships. Introducing a half numeric, half alpha identity makes the name more disruptive, more distinct and memorable, the company said.
A new strapline ‘Duty Free & More’ is designed to “futureproof” the business and the company’s ambitious plans, 3Sixty said.
“This is the single biggest significant change we’ve had in the business,” Klepach told The Moodie Davitt Report (click on The Moodie Davitt Podcast below to hear more from him), during an extensive interview at 3Sixty headquarters just before the launch.
“Changing the name is a big decision, but we think that today the industry is undergoing a major generational change. There’s an opportunity where omni-channel, or e-commerce, plays a big role in our industry. And there’s no doubt in my mind… we’re the best positioned to take it to the next level. But not only in the Americas; we’re doing it in Asia successfully and we plan on having e-commerce be a big part of our business.
“We needed a name that really identified with that and had overlapping impact on our retail inflight and our retail in airports – as well as giving us the flexibility to let the consumers know that we are ‘Duty Free & More’ and be able to service their needs to their homes.”
[Click on the icon to hear Benny Klepach talk about the significance of his company’s new identity.]
The identity reveal was the culmination of a 14-month project to redefine the business for the travel retail industry of the future, 3Sixty said.
“Over the past months, DFASS has been progressively modernising our organisation, investing in new technology and pioneering omni-channel, pre-travel ordering for customers that includes home delivery,” the company commented. “Additionally, we are committed to expanding our influence in airport duty free and specialty retail, with recent concession wins at Dallas Fort Worth, Charlotte Douglas and other international airports in the Americas.”
Lauding disruption, affirming innovationDFASS commissioned Designhouse, a leading UK design firm, to rebrand DFASS so that the company’s name and visual identity reflected its role as a disruptor and innovator in the travel retail sector, without restricting growth into other fields. [Next week’s e-Zine will include an interview with Designhouse.]
The logo features a radar sweep graphic device, designed to illustrate that the business is constantly evolving and improving, looking outwards and scanning for opportunities.
At tonight’s event, Klepach told guests: “Today is a very important day in the history of DFASS. Formed in 1987, we have always tried to be at the cutting edge of innovation, particularly inflight.
“31 years later we now have over 600 employees and counting. We service over 400 million passengers annually. We operate across five continents with ground stores across the US, Mexico, Central & South America and the Caribbean. We now have a global network of over 120 packing & fulfilment stations.
How Benny Klepach turned 3Sixty Benny knew that DFASS had to embrace the digital age. Not just to survive but in fact to seize what he saw as an incredible opportunity. Airlines, so often cast as the poor relations of travel retail, actually held all the aces, he reckoned. |
“We are the world’s largest specialist inflight retailer, overseeing more than 30 inflight duty free concessions. With industry recognition of our successes, including Best Inflight Retailer five years in a row among many other awards, we’re in great shape.
“Duty free is in the next generation change and we are now at a crossing point and I have two options. One, to keep the company as it is and try to compete to the best of our possibilities, or two, move up a gear, developing faster, to make us an industry leader.
“Our goal is certainly not to be the biggest but to be the best, creating value for all our partners, consumers and the company.”
In order to deliver that vision, Klepach said he had enlisted the support of a high-class team of professionals, led by Executive Vice Chairman Roberto Graziani (former boss of The Nuance Group and joint leader of The Shilla Duty Free), whom he then introduced.
Graziani said: “I’m really delighted today to be part of the team and to have had the opportunity to partner with Benny on this exciting new venture.” He introduced and saluted the management team and said that the company had worked hard to better understand how it was perceived both from an industry perspective and from the inside.
“From this process, we got very relevant feedback,” he said. “We understood our need to better leverage our strengths, improve our weaknesses and eventually modify our business culture to be more consistent with our current size and the role our company is now playing in the travel retail industry.
“The overall process has led us to create a new strategy for our brand, our DNA, with a new vision, mission and proposition statements and new brand values for the company.
“Our Vision – ‘We climb higher, to see wider’ – defines what we are doing and why we are doing it and underlines our commitment to continually look for the big picture in our industry to share a new perspective on travel retail with our partners.
“Our mission defines our ambitions: “We will increase the number of touch points for the brand through investing in technology and marketing in order to offer relevant and personalised products and services”.
“Our brand proposition represents the heart and soul of what our brand promises to deliver: ‘A constant desire to evolve and transform travel retail together with our partners, through disruption and improvement.”
“Our brand values inform how the company and our team of employees – all of us – shall behave, not just internally, but also with our partners and the travelling customer.” Graziani then listed 3Sixty’s core brand values:
1) We Drive Strategic Partnerships: “This means we are not doing business in a speculative way. We are committed to long term win-win partnerships and to drive the commercial agenda.”
2) We Focus on Service: “We truly want to build tailored solution for both our B2B and a B2C customers.”
3) We Care About Our People: “This means we commit to develop our people, to treat them fairly and to celebrate success together.”
4) We Are Visionary: “We are committed to be always focused on the big picture.”
5) We Are Innovative: “We are not afraid to try new things and to make mistakes.”
As a result of the redefined brand strategy, it became clear that the name DFASS (Duty Free Air and Ship Supply) was no longer as relevant in the marketplace the company operates in, said Graziani.
“We realised we needed a new name and logo that underline the discontinuity with the past and that can take us forward in new directions that DFASS quite simply can’t – and in fact in any direction we want to operate in the future.”
With that comment, Graziani revealed the new identity, saying, “I’m very proud to announce there is now a new player – a very relevant player – in travel retail: 3Sixty. Duty Free & More.”
The full spectrum
Graziani said that the name sets the company apart from its competitors. “A name that suggests the full spectrum. 360 degrees covers the whole globe, so it also suggests our breadth of operation. Everything, Everywhere.”
Why the 3 in numeric form and the Sixty in letters? “We believe it is more disruptive, more distinct, more memorable,” Graziani explained.
And why the tag line ‘Duty Free and more’? “We’re well known for travel retail and duty free, but we don’t want to limit ourselves to the field we currently work in,” Graziani said. “So the ‘more’ keeps it open-ended allowing us to operate in other areas.”
He continued: “It has always been in DFASS’ DNA to be an industry innovator and visionary. If we wanted to continue on this path and to seriously and authentically make this point in a world that continues to change so rapidly, we needed to evolve into 3Sixty.
“3Sixty Duty Free & More makes us much more relevant for the industry of today and, even more importantly, for the one of tomorrow.”
