The so-called Schwab-Borchardt mean plays an important role in the theory of (bivariate) means. It includes a lot of standard means, such as the logarithmic mean, the first and second Seiffert means and the Neuman-Sándor mean. In this paper, we investigate an approach which allows us to construct a class of new means. Such class includes the (generalized) Schwab-Borchardt mean and other old/new means derived as well.