Meet Beer-Square.tw!

April 19, 2024

A new logo often symbolizes a new direction or activity for a company. It makes you realize that enterprises are living entities, growing, evolving, or even dying. Just like us humans, they dependon choices made, luck, and the environment.

Therefore, with the introduction of the new logo and name of our company, I wanted to take the chance to briefly retrace the history of the company, from its birth to its now 13th anniversary.

Bilishi Co. Ltd is born in 2012 in Taiwan, with its Chinese name 比利喜有限公司. The sinophiles will recognize the word play with “Belgium”, because when I created Bilishi, it was intended to be a very Belgian company of a Belgian guy making Belgian waffles. The flag, the crown, the art-nouveau, the colors, all codes related to Belgium.

A few years later came the first logo change with the arrival of my first business partner Florian. With him came a new very Belgian product: the craft beer. New product, new logo, same colors. That change also came with a new direction for the company, from B2C in a night-market in Taichung to B2B all around Taiwan.

Distributing beers came with a new challenge, because contrary to the waffles, we weren’t making them, we imported existing brands with their own logos. Promoting products with an other company’s branding is challenging.

That’s when we decided to use the Bilishi logo for the waffles only, and simply using the breweries logos to promote the beers. Along with a simplification of the original logo.

Then came Covid-19 and the war in Ukraine. This was a dark moment for the company as it almost died. Importing goods that cannot be sold during a pandemic isn’t very profitable. The waffles were made in Taiwan, but 90% of the ingredients were imported. It was decided to put a stop at the waffle part of the business as well as the import activities, keeping the beer distribution alive with already-imported beers.

After a while, our customers started missing the beers we used to import, particularly the Bertinchamps beers. This is when Valentin entered the picture, bringing back the import business, focusing on the Bertinchamps Brewery, and we started using their logo on all our social media and marketing. This is the version of the company you are probably familiar with, as it is the last one until the new change we are operating today.

Until then, Bilishi was always a very Belgian company. I am Belgian, Florian is Belgian, waffles are Belgian and the beers are Belgian. But Valentin is French. Bilishi is now European if not international, it is a Taiwanese company after all.

Following the growth of Bertinchamps, we’ve come to realize that there’s an opportunity in the beer ecosystem in Taiwan, now more than ever. In 2 years, we’ve hit what I consider pretty remarkable milestones; we’ve doubled (or even tripled) our quantity of shipments, we are distributed in bars and restaurants all over Taiwan, we are always welcomed with great enthusiasm every time we join events, and we are now in high-end supermarkets, making it way easier to find us.

Now, we want to target an even bigger market, bringing fantastic beers from around the world to become more accessible in Taiwan, sooner or later.

So, here we are, with a new name and a new logo, better fitted to our new direction and vision!
Meet Beer-Square!

But why Beer-Square?

The idea came up while drinking beers with Valentin in Brussels. We were enjoying an early summer afternoon in a beer garden called Jardin Hospice in the center of the Belgian capital.

Literally a beer square! Drinking early in this amazing environment made us want more than ever to find ways to bring the Belgian drinking culture to Taiwan. Thus came our vision of Beer-Square, to become a hubfor those that love beers, like us.

jardin brussels

Aligning with our ambition to make good beers more accessible for those in favor, we are also launching our new website, made by our friends from Pineapple Web. With this website, we want to be closer to those who enjoy good beers, to follow our latest news, and of course, to get hands-on with the beers you want and have them delivered to your door.

What's next for 比利喜 and now Beer-Square.tw? Stay tuned and find out!

Cheers,
Simon