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Before Glynis & I moved to The Woodlands in Texas we lived in a small town called Walton-on-Thames in Surrey, England for almost 10 years running up to September 2001. While there we bought a little black Scottie dog...and...yup, you guessed it...his name was Oscar.
Anyway... we moved and bought a home in The Woodlands, TX. I worked as a computer programmer initially and when I decided it was time to do my own thing real estate was what I wanted to get into. But... what name for a team? "The Langenhoven Group" was just too much of a mouthful and I could imagine spending countless precious minutes spelling and re-saying the name until it was understood... no thanks!!
So... I looked around for a name... "Golding Properties" or "The Golding Group" was an early choice but was quickly cast aside by Glynis(sorry, by us!). Then I thought of Oscar and how nice & brief & recognizable it is... so I started producing some mock-ups of signs...
One of my early test signs was the one here... "We sniff out the best deals!" (We still do!!)
Then the red & blue design took hold... being in Texas (never mind the US!) red & blue was something I wanted to go for... besides it looks pretty cool... at this stage "Oscar" was still part of the design and the name we settled on was "The Oscar Group".
But, something told us that having a dog on our actual logo was not the thing to do so Oscar was, with reluctance... removed from the sign. My sister, Yolanda (now living in New Zealand) is a graphics design superstar and she designed the little home with the Texas Star in the middle.
Finally we went live with a small brokerage in Houston called "Houston Executive Realtors" - you could do your own sign as long as they were mentioned somewhere on it and the sign above was the first official "The Oscar Group" sign.
I was with H.E.R. for less than a year before I joined Keller Williams. At the moment we're using their signs (for the time being!!) but our logo maintains it's rich heritage:
It's linked to the Keller Williams logo & the blue & red is slightly different too... actually, might want to get it changed back to the previous colors... they look pretty cool! Any comments on that?
So... there you have it. The story behind "The Oscar Group".
Well, almost.. there's one more piece....
Unfortunately Oscar is no longer with us. Some time towards the end of 2005 Oscar died... his little body was riddled with cancer and by the time we found out something was wrong there was nothing that could be done for him. It was incredibly sad as he was a big part of our family and there were tears for many weeks. As I write this it's welling up again...hopefully we'll see him again.
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