Goodbye Purplebricks – name disappears in rebrand | WATCH

Purplebricks Canada has, from a few days ago, been rebranded as FairSquare Group Realty – with the Purplebricks name, logo and colour scheme expunged.

In July 2020 the UK-based Purplebricks Group sold its Canada operation for some £35m, in a bid for cash to bolster its UK activities.

At the time of the 2020 sale of the Canadian operation – to international financial services firm Desjardins – it was the end of Purplebricks’ ambitions to become a global brand.

The disposal in 2020 also ended a significant financial burden as the Canadian business suffered an adjusted operating loss of £2.8m for the 10 months to April 2019 and the book value of its gross assets in October 2019 was £11.4m.

The sale in 2020 included the rights for Desjardins to use the Purplebricks brand in Canada for a transitional period until December 2021.

Now that period has ended and the agency has become FairSquare Group Realty, thus finally ending any form of Purplebricks activity or branding outside the UK.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_0QlEWvJV4

Pascal Laflamme, president of FairSquare Group Realty, is quoted in Canada’s Real Estate Magazine as saying: “That’s why we needed to rebrand from Purplebricks. When we rebranded … to Purplebricks it wasn’t the choice of the business, it was the choice of the shareholders because they wanted to create that global brand. And I felt the marketing, the messaging also, wasn’t perfectly adapted to the Canadian reality.”

He says FairSquare is “a brand that we feel reflects who we are as a business and how we want to be perceived by the customers.”