Bon Brand

It pays to keep your business to a manageable size and not to overextend.
Even the greatest ideas to develop your brand or move into new areas can consume scarce resources of time, goodwill and cash.

Bud Off is a term that encourages you to allow your business to divide and form new branches (or twigs) that can be hived off and sold. You keep brand focus on your core competences and potentially generate a new stream of investment capital. Alternatively you may be able to take a partial reward as one part leaves.

Cut the umbilical if you have diversified and it hasn’t quite worked consider closing or winding up the venture. It brings you back to your core brand that may have been starved of your time and attention as you looked after the ailing child.
It may be hard to acknowledge a mistake but get over it and get on with your future development.

Say No if there is a new idea or opportunity. Unless the new idea is key to your brand development and offers a far better and safer return than sticking to your knitting.
Good business’s spin out lots of ideas and options. great business’s select those that are worth time, effort and resources without deflecting the core brand investment.

Further comment

Portfolio simplification and brand pruning are needed; the big question is how do you decide which brands to keep and which to harvest or divest. The real challenge is in developing a brand portfolio strategy after the fact. (Alan Adamson)

Brand Pruning can be defined as a process by which a company cuts of those Brands and line brands, which has less contribution on its bottom-line or some times top line as well. This is almost a continuous process particularly for FMCG and white goods. From Brand Pruning-A wisely used tool in the Marketers’ Arsenal. By Rajkumar Dasgupta,Sr. Lecturer/Dr. Harish Pareek

Handbook of Niche Marketing: Principles and Practice (Haworth Series in Segmented, Targeted, and Customized Market) by Art Wienstien available from Amazon