We have decided to change our name from Avenir to Awara in order to better communicate to our clients the uniqueness of all what we do.

What’s in a Name?
“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
by any other name would smell as sweet.”
(Juliet to Romeo, Shakespeare)

The Avenir name has been very beloved to us through all these years, but we note that there are other companies that use it in a wide range of businesses and some even in businesses that in principle are competing with us.

Faced with this shared brand problem, we as by far the largest and strongest of the firms with the Avenir brand realized that we will be better off by changing the name so as not to be confused with a host of other companies.

The tactic of changing the name reflects our style of working, always thinking beyond the box in order to explore all possible solutions and selecting the one that will be best for us, and best for the client.

Streamline the Brand Strategy

We will also take this opportunity to streamline our brand strategy by adopting the Awara name for all our services. This will mean that our direct search recruitment firm, presently known as adapt2change will be rebranded to Awara Direct Search.

Our law firm asset, Hellevig, Klein & Usov, will, however, continue under the separate brand in view of its high level of brand recognition.

Concentrated Ownership Structure

In this connection we will also undergo a corporate restructuring so that all group companies will be centrally held by one holding company by means of conversion of shares of the different entities to shares in the holding. This way the ownership of the business will not change as the present owners will be owners of the holding company.

Having analyzed the various ways to structure the holding and the various possible jurisdictions, we have settled for choosing Russia as the home for the holding company. This reflects our view on the development of Russian tax laws, administration, and judicial system.

Bringing order to the brand strategy will also help us better to access the capital markets.

Name giving is fun but names don’t come easy. There are so many variables to consider, like: Is the intended or a similar name already in use, by whom, in which contexts? Or, are suitable domains already cybersquatted? Does the word carry any negative connotations in another language?

On the road we encountered all these problems. We almost settled for “’Avara’, a beautiful word of the Finnish language meaning ‘spacious’ and yielding constructions such as ‘taking a wide view’ and ‘broad in mind.’ These are concepts that accurately describe what we do. But then our intelligence reported that in Italian and Latin the word carries a connotation of ‘stingy’ and ‘covetous.’ Us being far from that, we decided for good measure to add an extra ‘v,’ now spelling the word with a ‘w’ as ‘Awara.’

Trouble did not seem to stop here, for we found out that in the Urdu language the “awara” could mean something like ‘a person who is lost and has nowhere to go.’ Nevertheless we had to draw the line somewhere. And anyway, if anybody is lost and doesn’t know where to go on the Russian market, then they should for sure come to us.

Juliet said that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but we think that actually in business it can make a difference. We are sure that our new Awara brand will help us to focus our efforts to bring yet more added value to our clients and in all we do.

For more information, please, contact:

Jon Hellevig
Managing Partner
jon.hellevig@hku.ru
Tel. +7 495 517 0969