I was impressed with a particular paragraph I read in Sally Richards, ".com Success". She writes about branding and the following statement impressed me:

"Branding is not a marketing, advertising or PR issue. It is the fine art of weaving all of the important elements of your company together to present your dot-com as a believable, reliable experience. It's your responsibility to make sure that your company has a brand that will pull it through the tough times ahead, because when the market is tearing down your valuation, you'd better make sure the analysts, the press, and your users are on your side, or you will be dot-com dead."

Now the analysts and the press are not an issue for us because they don't know that we exist, yet, but our users are a different story. We want to be sure that our users trust us, and that includes both our vendors and our shoppers. So we are embarking on a plan to bring credibility and positive feelings toward the QFLEA brand. We're writing a branding plan to present our brand values and brand competencies. We hope to execute in it a way that brings favorable results for our little flea market. Time will tell.