A new name is ushered in by a refreshed branding and website. The time has come for us to bid farewell to "Primarius Financial Solutions" and enter a new era as Alarie.
While our not-so-secret name change has been in the works for some time and the general feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, the most common question we've received is why? - Why the change, and why Alarie?
So for all those asking "why", we invite you to a trip down memory lane.
When we set up the firm on the run back in 2004 we chose the name "Forum Accounting and Advisory", the idea being that the Roman Forum was the place to meet for business and an integral part of daily life, so we hoped it would be The meeting place for success. We chose a simple logo of the Roman Forum, or more specifically the character "G" in webdings font, being a "Classical Building" 🏛 (Yes, it really was).
Sadly no evidence remains of our first website. Although I admit to making some questionable design choices, 2004 was a special time for web design, and our site was definitely a product of its time.
Fast forward to 2015 and we were well overdue for a more appropriate logo, and preferably one which isn't part of a font family. When we put the name and our firm details out to designers, the majority of the designs came back with speech bubbles - as it turns out, the name "Forum" had become synonymous with community forums, leading to the firm at times being mistaken as an accounting community forum. Rather than changing our business model to match, we began considering options for a new name.
After many failed attempts we came across the name "Primarius", with the Latin meaning of the first order or the highest degree, which sounded great and we chose this as our new name. Unfortunately in our haste we hadnt checked the domain names and were only able to acquire the ".net.au" address, with the ".com.au" address already being used by another organisation. What seemed like a small issue quickly became a frustration as we began receiving erroneous calls, emails and even payments meant for other businesses. Compounding these struggles was the unforeseen difficulty in pronouncing this name over the phone and the ease of misspelling.
For this reason we have long considered a final name change - one that avoided past mistakes and we were proud to use. Eventually we settled on reviving the name used by the first iteration of our firm - "Alarie", which initially started in South Africa back in 1986. Our about us goes in to slightly more detail.
For us, Alarie not only had meaning & some sentimental value, but was easy to say and ticked all of our boxes.
What this means for our you
Ultimately, this name change is mostly cosmetic, and we are making every effort to minimise any foreseeable inconvenience. All services will continue as per normal, with the name change being implemented in manner which will not necessitate re-signing any existing agreements.
All existing team emails & groups will continue to flow through to the new ones, however our team will solely be using sending from the new Alarie addresses from now on. The old Primarius website will begin forwarding to Alarie shortly.
Concurrently with rolling out these changes, we will continue to review our systems and processes with the ongoing aim of providing even better service to our clients, complemented by innovative solutions and proactive advice.
As always, we welcome any and all feedback, comments, or suggestions. Please do not hesistate to let us know if you encounter any issues or headaches resulting from our name change.
Thank you from all of us here at Alarie, we look forward to many years of working with you.
