Dr. Stephen Liu likes to compare the bank he co-founded six years ago to a tomato.
“Tomatoes are bold, fresh, fast-growing, healthy, and safe,” he says. “So is our bank.”
In fact, the medical doctor-turned-banker likes the comparison so much that last week the $350 million-asset InterBusiness Bank in Alhambra, Calif., officially changed its name to TomatoBank.
Dr. Liu, its chairman and chief executive officer, said he had always thought the old name was too generic, and he has been trying to persuade the board to change it for years to give the bank more visibility in the ethnic communities it targets in an around Los Angeles.
The new name is not a complete stretch. The bank has used a tomato as its logo since its inception, and its Web address has been www.tomatobank.com since 2001.
Dr. Liu said the word “tomato” resonates with Asian-American customers, because banks in Asia are often named after fruit, vegetables, or flowers grown in their region, and Asian-Americans particularly love tomatoes.
The bank’s Hispanic customers tell him that the name reminds them of their immigrant roots, since their forebears picked tomatoes in California’s agricultural valleys.
Most U.S. banks stick to the tried and true when naming themselves — nearly 1,500 use the word “First” in their names, and more than 500 use “Community” — though some will opt for the offbeat to set themselves apart from their competitors.
Richard A. Soukup, a partner with the Chicago office of the consulting firm, Plante & Moran PLLC, said that the TomatoBank name is “refreshingly innovative” and will definitely be a conversation starter. “But time will tell if it has legs and branding appeal.”
Ted Salame, the president of BrandEquity International in Newton, Mass., thinks it will.
His branding firm was instrumental in getting Harlem Savings Bank to change its name to Apple Bank for Savings in 1983, after it bought a number of banks outside Harlem. At that time the bank ran advertisements playing on New York’s nickname, “the Big Apple,” with tag lines such as “We’re good for you,” and “Pick this CD and it will ripen in two years.”
In just three months Apple brought in $120 million of new deposits, Mr. Salame said. It now has $7.6 billion of assets and is based in the Long Island town of Manhasset.
“People like that name because it’s friendly, and it makes you feel like you’re dealing with a friendly community bank and not a big bank,” Mr. Salame said.
Dr. Liu’s bank actually had done quite well under the InterBusiness name. Its assets have nearly doubled in the last two years. Last year its net income rose 83%, to $3.7 million. Its efficiency ratio, its return on assets, and its net interest margin are all above average for banks in its asset class, according to Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. data.
Nevertheless, competition among Asian-American banks in southern California is particularly fierce, and so it is even more critical that TomatoBank stands out, Dr. Liu said.
The board was reluctant to approve the name change, because they thought TomatoBank was not “American” enough, he said. “But I said, if an American computer company can be named Apple, why can’t a bank be named Tomato?”
Last month the bank notified regulators of its new name and made the change official Aug. 8, Dr. Liu said. Within a month the signs at its four branches and all its marketing materials and bank documents will be changed to the new name.
TomatoBank is planning a marketing campaign around the name change to coincide with the opening of a branch in west Los Angeles’ Japantown. That branch is scheduled to open within a month.
But Dr. Liu said he expects the best advertising to be word-of-mouth.
“Now when I’m sitting at a bar and I tell somebody I’m from TomatoBank, they want to find out the story behind that,” he said.
