We all like new looks for us in our person or in our belongings such as our homes, in fact by making small changes like paint or lighting we transform entirely the atmosphere of any space.

In the past I had taught Spanish so I wanted a Spanish name for my store, as if to make my customers learn and practice some Spanish, Diseños Casa y Jardín when translated into English means Designs for the Home and Garden, yet to my surprise that name has been very hard to place on the mind of even my Spanish speaking clientele! However they always gave reference to my name every time they wanted to share with others what they had bought for their homes.

Time came by and so the opportunity to have our business registered as an official trade mark to legally protect our own designs of furniture, accessories and so forth, well the Instituto Mexicano de la Propiedad Industrial (Patent &Trademark Office) in Mexico told me I couldn’t have Diseños Casa y Jardín registered since they all are in a way generic names, they needed something more distinctive, so someone suggested my name and after running a sound prove system they said I could have it! Three years ago (Jan 27, 2009) they granted us the official use of Eddie Wharez®

If you have been one of our customers for some time you would already notice some changes throughout our ads, it took some time, really out of modesty for the registered mark to be emphasized, we have used different logos and last year especially we chose to give more recognition to the mark using smaller fonts for the actual name of the store.

Another thing we started doing with much success was showing in the ad the inside of the store, people would get a glimpse of what the store looked like, they grew curious and made them come the store, sometimes friends ask me why I am in all the ads here is the answer: a friend of mine a realtor, told me that in their business it is very important to show your face, who you are, what you stand for and more importantly that you are really proud for what you do and that your own reputation is behind everything you sell and guess what? That was exactly how I felt!!! I jokingly usually reply to my friends that “my dream was to be a model so I can be my own” then I watch their faces and laugh!!!

Long story already! The thing is that for 2012 I felt we needed to make a small change in our image but make it in such a way that turned out to be something really fun and out of the ordinary, using social media only (facebook) we launched a contest for anybody interested in designing our logo, more than 20 people applied and we got more than 40 proposals, it was hard to choose! I got 4 finalists and decided I am going to use all those logos for the different things Eddie Wharez® does with the winner to be the general of them all.

The winner of the first prize was Pablo Dicochea (he currently works for the city hall).
Second prize was for Martín Martínez (General Director of Terranova Inversiones).
The third prize was shared by Rodolfo Haros (currently working at Alphagraphics and singing in Grupo Rojo at Chango’s Bar) & Getzemanih Lozano (professional photographer).

I will be busy furnishing and decorating Pablo’s home office since that is his award! Congratulations Pablo!

For the awards ceremony on Saturday, January 7th, yes you are reading correctly and you can laugh as well if you want, we had a red carpet for all of our guests and had a photo shoot that will remain in people’s minds for quite some time. We beautifully decorated the empty building across from our gallery, Richard Scott played the sax and unveiled the plaque with the new logo while beautiful Conchita Peralta conducted the program doing an excellent job; wine and coffee were enjoyed by all the more than 120 guests that showed up – none got a personal invitation – remember we only used facebook! Thank you for being our customers, facebook friends and fans!

As you can see by the pictures we had a really great time and for all the coffee drinkers like myself, our own brand of coffee is ready to be bought at our store. If you want to taste it we’ll even brew some for you!!!