AstroTurf company name rebranding

Faux grass gets creamed: Thirty-eight years after pioneering the industry in which it is still the leader, the AstroTurf brand is hanging up its cleats.

The most famous name in the artificial surface market eventually will be phased out as Leander [Texas]-based Southwest Recreational Industries Inc. folds six companies and 51 brands of various products into a single company called SRI Sports Inc.

This is an amazingly brash decision, to take a brand that is not only well-known, but has become a generic name to describe any artificial turf product, a la Kleenex or Xerox, and to just–POOF–delete it. And not only eliminate it, but to subsume the product and all others under the less-than-inspiring moniker SRI Sports Inc.

“This has been on our minds for the last couple of years, the idea that we wanted to clean up the image of the company and make things simpler for our customers,” says Reed Seaton, president and CEO of Southwest.

“There actually have been cases where people would buy an indoor floor from us and be out looking for a football field–without even recognizing that we’re the biggest manufacturer of artificial turf fields in the business. It’s time to end the confusion and plant one flag on our products.”

Huh? We can’t even follow the logic of that argument. Consumers go in to buy a floor from them, and then announce that they have to go look elsewhere to buy a football field? How about a used bridge while they’re at it?

“This is a bold move, a really bold move,” says Mark Nicholls, president of Fonthill, Canada-based Sportexe, one of SRI’s competitors. “I’m not sure if they’re doing the right thing, but it takes a lot of guts to be sitting at the top of the heap and turn your back on the AstroTurf name that has been such a signature in the industry. They must feel that with all the new technology and so much development and improvement in artificial turf surfaces, being considered just the ‘AstroTurf company’ had become a negative thing.”

Perhaps, but you’d think the name could be saved and used just for the artificial sports turf brand. Talk about killing the messenger. If people are not aware that the company is about so much more than AstroTurf, perhaps the company could do more to brand itself, rather than kill off its most highly visible and recognizable brand.

SRI’s President Seaton denies the company is turning its back on its own history: “We’re proud of AstroTurf.–But eventually there can become so many things out there that it’s just too confusing to customers, and they’re the people that matter,” he says.

Yes, Mr. Seaton, the landscape of artificial turf is confusing, and one look at the names of some turf products and companies should make it clear why:

1st Turf, CamTurf, ClubTurf, Durraturf, EZfield, Field Turf, Forever Green, Gras, Grasmere, Grass Tex, Instant Turf, KonyGreen, Lectron, MasterTurf, Nova Grass, Omniturf, PoliGras, ProGreen, Ryturf, SafePlay TURF, SmartGrass, SprinTurf, Tartan Turf, Thiolon Grass, TourTurf, Wyco Turf,…∞

Sure, most of these copy the AstroTurf name structure, obviously trying to suck customers away from the leader. But how effective will the top-selling artificial turf brand be once it is given a bland name like SRIgras and thrown into the abyss with the names above? Our prediction: everyone will keep calling any artificial turf “AstroTurf,” but the actual product that used to go by that name will command an ever-shrinking piece of the market.