Vinjamuri's People

If, like me, you’re a fan of good business writing and you’re interested in entrepreneurial brands, I can recommend a book that you will almost certainly like.

In Accidental Branding: How Ordinary People Build Extraordinary Brands, David Vinjamuri profiles eight entrepreneurs—some you may have heard of, others not. The business owners that Vinjamuri covers all share one dominant attribute: a passion for the quality and customer ‘fit’ of their products.

Most worked for years to refine their small business brands before they hit it big or, in the case of J. Peterman, hit it big, lost it big, and then slowly rebuilt it. It’s refreshing, by the way, to meet seasoned entrepreneurs in their seventies and eighties, like Peterman, Gert Boyle (Columbia Sportswear), and Roxanne Quimby (Burt’s Bees). No sleek airbrushed cover-girl CEOs a la Fast Company magazine here.

Happily for the book, Vinjamuri doesn’t just sit back and analyze the elements that make for business and branding success. He injects himself, and his voice, into the narratives, recounting his visits to the subjects and allowing them, at critical moments, to tell parts of their creation tales in their own voices. Throughout he exhibits the born writer’s eye for revealing detail. We experience not just how these not-so-ordinary entrepreneurs think, but how and where they live and work.

Ultimately, Accidental Branding is all about story elements, both in the brands themselves and in Vinjamuri’s approach to his topic. Every brand needs a story, and Vinjamuri gives us some superb examples to ponder and retell.