Solvoz – today we decided this will be the name for our responsible procurement platform. It has a nice ring to it and we like the form of the word, but there is more to explain. Learn more about the story of our name.

Esperanto

Many names have been reviewed. Language always has a connotation, so we thought about French versus English names and words, looked at Swahili or Arabic. They were either too long, or had a too specific meaning that excludes some goals we do have. ‘We needed a politically neutral language, so we came to Esperanto,’ says CEO Claire Barnhoorn. ‘Neutral because it does not belong to any country, and the international thought behind it also appeals to us.’. So the language was chosen, now the word and meaning.

The meaning

It all came back to the basics, why did we start our platform? We are here to solve something, to help users globally by finding the right solutions for their need. Have a needs based approach. Include total cost of ownership. Help opening up expert knowledge, help you with your search. Support our users with finding the right solution, including existing and innovative solutions, inform about prerequisites, and all that is needed to have a responsible solution, hence:

solvi (solv-i): to solve; to dissolve

After some quick lessons Esperanto we learned that in future time verbs end with -os. We took the liberty to change the grammatically correct ‘s’ at the end to a ‘z’, because we do things differently and found it a more exciting name. Hence a new name was born… We were prepared for long workshops today, but after two coffees we were all convinced!

Solvoz: we are going to solve and fix it!

If you are intrigued by our organisation, please do not hesitate to contact us.