The 50-year-old North San Antonio Chamber of Commerce has dropped the geographic signifier in its title to higher mirror its aspirations to symbolize companies throughout the area.
The newly-christened Metro SA Chamber has additionally kicked “of Commerce” to the curb in its rebrand, changing into a part of a development of chambers trying to modernize each their manufacturers and their worth proposition to potential member companies.
The title change and new brand had been introduced Thursday night at a “Rebrand Reveal” member occasion on the chamber’s headquarters off Wurzbach Parkway.
President and CEO Brett Finley, who’s marking a yr main the chamber this month, chatted with the San Antonio Report in regards to the new moniker forward of Thursday’s occasion.
The North Chamber has lengthy needed to rebrand to higher mirror that it represents companies throughout San Antonio, he stated, and would probably have achieved a lot earlier if the pandemic hadn’t disrupted enterprise as traditional.
“Our membership spans all 4 county precincts and all 10 metropolis council districts — and past,” he stated. That actuality “actually simply didn’t match up with the title,” he stated.
“There’s no territorial jurisdiction for changing into part of our group, simply as there’s no jurisdiction for the actions that we love to do or after we’re advocating for our companies.”
The rebrand will include an internet site refresh, which might be full subsequent month. The chamber’s new brand leaves the previous gold and black colour scheme behind in favor of blue lettering; the letters “SA” are embedded within the “o” in Metro, which is surrounded by a purple circle with factors implying a compass. “Chamber” is in slender black capital letters beneath.
The Metro SA Chamber refresh follows the Better San Antonio Chamber of Commerce’s refresh in 2023, when it re-added the “Better” it had dropped in 2012 again into its title. It de-emphasized, however didn’t utterly drop, the phrase commerce.
That very same yr, the Better Chamber made overtures to the North Chamber about merging, after 80% of its membership agreed that San Antonio is dwelling to too many chambers — no less than 10 within the metropolis, plus these representing surrounding municipalities like Alamo Heights and New Braunfels.
The timing appeared proper; neither chamber had a everlasting CEO, because the North Chamber’s Cristina Aldrete and San Antonio Chamber’s Richard Perez had each stepped down in late 2022.
However the effort in the end failed. The North Chamber’s board chairman on the time stated they felt like the 2 organizations had completely different constituencies.
Late final yr, the Better Chamber named Jeff Webster to go up that group, whereas the North Chamber tapped Finley. In March, the third of the massive three, The San Antonio Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, named Luis Rodriguez to helm the nation’s oldest Hispanic chamber after Marina Gonzalez stepped down in July 2023.
And so San Antonio stays a metropolis chock stuffed with chambers, every making an attempt to elucidate their worth propositions to the town’s tens of 1000’s of companies, massive and small.
Finley has spent a great deal of time serious about new methods to help companies past the membership/occasions/sponsorship mannequin, whereas nonetheless rising the group, which has remained at about 900 members for no less than the previous yr.
“Organizations like ours are going to must be prepared to … be versatile and actually attempt to take a look at issues like non-dues income, and never simply be solely restricted to membership and occasions,” he stated.
