Courtesy of Envu
Prepare to see fresh hues and hear a new name during industry events and conversations. The Envu era in the golf industry has officially started.
So, what’s Envu? It’s the company formerly known as Bayer Environmental Science.
A brief history on the events leading to the Envu era:
Feb. 24, 2021: Bayer announces its intention to sell its Environmental Science business division, which serves the golf, lawn and landscape, pest control, production ornamental and vegetation management markets. Bayer veteran Gilles Galliou is selected to lead the divestment and become CEO of the new company.
March 10, 2022: Bayer announces London-based private equity firm Cinven agreed to purchase the environmental science business division for $2.6 billion.
Aug. 16: Envu is revealed as the new name of the standalone company.
Oct. 4: Bayer and Cinven announce the completion of the sale. Envu releases a multi-colored logo featuring red, blue and purple hues.
Galliou confirmed in an interview with Golf Course Industry that Envu has publicly launched in the United States markets. The new name and colors are on the company’s website and golf Twitter feed. Employees are calling the company Envu in conversations.
“Bayer Environmental Science has been a great ride with a great history,” he says. “Envu is now the reference. This is who we are. From now on, we will be called Envu.”
The company contrasts a startup despite a new owner, name, colors and logo. The people, products, distributor network and product pipelines that helped build Environmental Science into an industry stalwart remain intact. Envu will eventually replace Bayer on product labels, but customers will notice few differences besides people they know wearing different colors.
“We will be branding our products with Envu, but something like a Specticle or Signature will remain a Specticle or Signature,” Galliou says. “That’s the base of who we are.”
Envu’s physical base is Cary, North Carolina. The company will support between 900 and 1,000 employees, and it currently generates $700 million to $800 million in annual revenue, according to Galliou. Envu features enough people, products and solutions to impact the markets it serves, yet it’s significantly smaller than companies tied to behemoth industries such as agriculture and pharmaceuticals. The narrow focus could position the company to increase its support of the golf market beyond a diverse product portfolio and respected team of technical and sales specialists.
“Golf is a very, very small part for a lot of companies,” Galliou says. “It’s a very, very big part of our business. It’s essential to our business. As a company that will be totally focused on those markets, we have to become better partners. We have to spend more time with our customers, listen to them, and find the biggest pain points and find solutions for those.”
Galliou has listened carefully to internal and external voices throughout the past 20 months. Ten-figure transactions are complex, and present myriad human, logistical and legal obstacles. They are even more complex when the result is the formation of a new company.
A process as innocuous as selecting a name can be exhausting. Pronounced “ehn-VIEW,” the name derives from environmental and vision, a pair of the company’s core principles.
“What I’m amazed about is the number of names that are registered across the world,” Galliou says. “From the top of your mind, you want to have names that really can be used. You go on your whiteboard, list them and put 100 of them on there that seem totally new to you, and then you Google them or look at legal ownership of names, and you’ll kill almost 80 percent of them already. It’s incredible to find the right name and right concept, and then make sure it’s not being used or registered.”
Envu’s modern colors offer a different vibe for the golf industry — and the scheme was selected by calculated design. With dozens of companies selling products in the same categories, Galliou and team wanted an eye-catching presence.
“If you look at the color scheme of the competitions that we have today, they are all very similar,” he says. “We’re a standalone company. We need to stand out. We couldn’t choose a color scheme that was already half consumed by everybody else. Knowing that, we decided to take those warm, trendy colors. We totally own that willingness to be different.”
How soon will the logo and colors be spotted? Galliou pointed to his Microsoft Teams backdrop when answering the question.
“It’s important for us to be proud of the company we create and to make people understand it exists,” he says. “We have to stand behind the logo. As you can see in the background, the first thing that we did was change my background and put an Envu logo here. It’s important for us to show Envu to the world.”
Guy Cipriano is Golf Course Industry’s editor-in-chief.
