Rocklin, Calif. – GoAmerica®, Inc., one of the nation’s leading providers of text and video relay and on-site interpreting services announced that it has changed its name to Purple Communications, Inc. The Company’s stock ticker has changed from NASDAQ: GOAM to NASDAQ: PRPL.
In 2008, the Company completed five transactions, blending a portfolio of services that is tailored for people who are deaf or hard hearing. With those acquisitions came multiple brands and a need for a unified identity.
“When I founded Hands On, we adopted the color purple in our early logos. As we began educating consumers about our service, purple took on a life of its own, and customers started calling us the ‘purple company’,” said Ronald Obray, founder of Hands On Video Relay Service®. “The link to the color purple stuck with us over the years, and came to represent not just the quality of our services, but the values behind these services. Adopting Purple as a part of the company name is a testament to the community, the employees, and all the people who are working to make Purple Communications what it is today.”
“The desire and passion to serve the deaf community that existed when we founded Sign Language Associates (SLA) in 1982 hasn’t changed,” said Janet Bailey, senior vice president of community interpreting for Purple Communications, and SLA’s founder and its former CEO. “Now, this passion is captured as part of the Purple brand and the spirit of service behind the new company name.”
“Creating an integrated company with a single purpose and clear branding direction was an important goal for us after last year’s transactions,” said Dan Luis, Purple Communications’ CEO. “As a name, ‘Purple’ accomplishes this while connecting all of the company’s services to the shared set of core values that already existed in each of the companies we brought together.”
The Company name change is part of a comprehensive branding roll out that will align all of the service brands of Purple Communications, including Hands On Video Relay Service, i711®, and IP-Relay.com. These service brands, which now carry the “Powered by Purple” tagline, will soon be updated to visually reflect a stronger connection to the Purple brand.
The Company’s community interpreting services, Sign Language Associates (SLA), Visual Language Interpreting (VLI), and Hands On Services will also soon be unified under one name, Purple Language Services, now the nation’s leading provider of on-site interpreting services.
