Distility Branding, a Toronto-based company housed in the MaRS building,
announced this week that it had procured $350,000 in angel investment funding to expand its business.
In a release, Distility CEO Axle Davids said the funding "provides the capital
for us to aggressively expand our sales networks and pursue businesses
and marketing partners who find traditional branding too slow,
complicated and expensive." Company spokesperson Andrew Stewart says that expansion will include both expanding the office and hiring.
The company has banded itself as a new type of branding company -- using a presentation called "
Brand Scammed" to highlight the sometimes too-long and foggy process as it is practiced elsewhere. As Stewart says, the old "expert model" of branding was often expensive and based on a consultant bringing an outside impression, hazily conceived, to a client. Distility pitches its own "
1day1brand" approach, which includes collaboration with company employees and the use of innovative software, that it claims shortens the process and makes it cheaper and more effective.
Founded in 2001 as aXle Branding (named after founder Axle Davids), the company evolved into Distility Branding in 2008. In 2009, they became a client of the business innovation incubator MaRS and, working with advisor Lance Laking, are pursuing expansion through their new technology-based model of innovation. Stewart says that in the past year, the company has grown from three full-time staff to four full-time and four part-time staff, and has also been contracting out some work.
Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Andrew F. Stewart, Public Relations and Customer Relations Manager, Distility Branding
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