I am a very loyal customer. If I love something you make, you have me for life. Case in point: I still use Bare Minerals. They got me with their loose powder when I was a teenager, and twenty-plus years later I am still using their products. I put on their tinted moisturizer every morning before leaving the house.
This morning I logged into my Daily Elements account. If you do not know this brand, it is a microgreens powder: freeze-dried, powdered, jarred, and shipped to your door every month. I love it because the ingredient list has exactly four things on it: micro broccoli, micro kale, micro red cabbage, and micro peas. No fillers, no additives. Taking this powder has become my daily ritual. I open the glass jar, use the little metal scoop that came with it, and stir it into my green tea. I also sneak it into my kids' scrambled eggs and smoothies. A great way to get extra nutrients into their food.
But today when I landed on their website, I thought I had accidentally clicked onto a knockoff. I didn't recognize a thing. Not the logo, not the colors, not the product. I went to check their Instagram to see if they had been hacked.
Nope, they had a rebrand.
The amber colored glass jar is gone. The microgreens will now arrive in a plastic seal-top pouch with a plastic spoon. First I was shocked. Then I was outraged. I immediately started contacting the company through DMs, commenting on their posts, leaving reviews on their website. I could not stop myself. I truly felt like the rug had been pulled from under me.
Part of why I love this product is the ritual I built around it. The glass jar is beautiful enough to live on my work desk and my kitchen countertop, which is exactly where I keep it, specifically so I don't forget to take it. Since it's a jar, it doesn't tip over, and the whole process is clean and contained. Open, scoop, close. Now with the new pouch, I have to dig for the spoon buried inside, which means getting fine green powder all over my hands. The seal will become a mess over time. And a pouch is far more likely to tip over and spill. But the most offensive part? The new packaging looks like a bag of premade salad. There is no way I am leaving that on my countertop. It will go straight in the cabinet, which means I will forget to take it.
The ritual is gone. The premium feel is gone. It looks like a cost-cutting move, which makes me wonder where else they are cutting corners. Is the product still the same? Who knows? The trust is gone, and without trust, I am no longer recommending something I once could not stop talking about.
As a brand owner, this experience was eye opening.
I did not realize what Daily Elements had built with me until it was gone. The jar on my counter was not just packaging. It was a relationship. A signal of quality I had internalized so completely that I stopped questioning it. And they dismantled it in one product update.
It made me think about KAEIU. About where I stand in that same relationship cycle with my own customers. Where are the gaps I have not noticed yet? What are the small rituals, the touches, the signals of quality that my customers have come to rely on without ever articulating them? And what would be the domino effect if I accidentally broke one?
My lesson here is this: the experience of using something matters as much as the thing itself. The ritual is part of the product. Trust is built slowly, in the details, in the small signals of quality that a customer absorbs without even realizing it. I hope that is the path I have been forging with KAEIU, and that it is coming through in every product I put out into the world. Because now I know exactly how quickly it can unravel.
As for Daily Elements, after all the DMs, post comments, and reviews, I wrote a letter to the CEO. You can read it here.
With love,
Maria
Left: a ritual. Right: a bag from the produce isle.