Back in December 2022, Fleet News Group reported that Eclipx was retiring the FleetPlus brand to only have one brand in the market. In 2023 they have gone one step further by removing the Eclipx name from the market, and returning to its origin brand, FleetPartners which was launched in 1997. From 31st March, everything changed to FleetPartners.
The Eclipx name was launched in 2015 when the company listed on the stock exchange and they went to market as FleetPartners, FleetPlus and FleetChoice. At the time, the Eclipx business pursued a strategy of different brands with each one offering specialised services.
Damien Berrell, CEO at Fleet Partners, shared some of the background to the change and explained how they will move forward with their accelerate program and focus on their core strength which is fleet management.
“FleetPartners was an easy choice. It’s been around for four decades. It’s synonymous I think with the fleet industry, when you talk to anyone who’s in the fleet industry and you mentioned FleetPartners, they all know who that is,” explained Berrell.
“So it really was an easy choice. It’s a sad day, I guess, because we still have great people in the organisation who grew up through with FleetPlus . So it’s a bit sad that we’re commissioning that brand. But we announced a project called accelerate at the end of last year, which is the consolidation of our brands, our systems and our processes. So as part of that, that’s why we’re sort of consolidating under the FleetPartners brand.”
“The accelerate program itself, it’s going to lead to a high engagement from our 500 talented people that will mean we can offer a superior service quality to our customers as well. So it’s an exciting project will take two years. And this is really the first leg of that.”
Referring back to 2015 when the Eclipx name was created, Berrell says the business is very different to what it was back then, and now the FleetPartners name makes more sense.
“Our company today is a lot different to what it was back then. So today, we are a pure play fleet business. That’s all we do. Because that’s what we’re really good at. So that’s just another reason why it made sense for us to change our brand back to FleetPartners. To be honest, when you say Eclipx to a lot of our investors, or our customers, it doesn’t really mean a lot to them. Though everyone knows fleet partners.”
