The origin of the name Bivo

This article explain a simple curiosity, which we did not thought it could be interesting for people. However, many have asked us where the name Bivo comes from, so we decided to briefly explain it, telling the story that brought us to choose the name of our product.

After having developed the first draft version of the Bivo formula, having created a home made version, having collected the necessary information to be able to produce the product professionally, we “just” needed to establish the company in order to make all the needed certifications for working as a food producer and make all the many steps to launch the complete food we had in mind, which had no name at that time, onto the market. We have never had such a great creativity, so we asked some friends to organize a “brain storming” day, during which we could find interesting names. We were looking for a name that could communicate from the one hand our link to traditions, on the other hand our search for innovation. More than two years have already passed, so we do not remember the details of that funny day. What is for sure is that the chosen name was “Ovidia”, which recalled the name of the philosopher Ovid – Ovidia was one of the daughter of Ovid. In particular from our Latin teacher we remembered one famous sentence of Ovid “Laudamus veteres, sed nostri utemur annis” (We praise the good old times, but we live today).

(ed: Taddeo and I were in the same class during high school).

In the following days we had to establish the company, which is the moment where you need to decide the name of it. We were thinking about an absurd name that could indicate our willingness to push toward innovation in the food sector (F00D 2.0, written with two zeros instead of “o”), but the notary fortunately discouraged us from calling the company like that. We still remember his reaction: first a laugh and then a clear explanation of all the problems that such a name would have created (among the others, the risk that public offices would have mixed up the “o” with the zero). So, on the spot we decided to call the company with the name that we had chosen for the product, adding anyway Food. The company was called Ovidia Food Srl.

In the following months it was time to produce the product. In the meantime a lot of time had passed, because developing the product has been a long and complex work under many different aspects, from supplying raw materials, to balancing and perfecting the formula. In that time some doubts had emerged about calling the product Ovidia: we thought it was not easy to remember, it was not describing what the product was, and many more things.

In that period the girlfriend of Taddeo thought about the name Bivo, which could derive from the union of bevo+cibo (drink+food), which was brief, easy to remember, original.

We liked that name, but we were still uncertain.

Until one day, looking at the mirror the sing “bivo” written on a paper, we realized that if you mirror-read bivo you get ovid (which is the beginning of Ovidia Food, and the name of the philosopher Ovid). We took it as a sign of destiny and definitively decided to call Bivo, indeed, Bivo.

Davide, Team Bivo