Dear Adrian,
I am writing this because I was once your most valuable kind of customer. The kind who tells everyone. The kind who recommends your product unprompted, who keeps a second jar at work at her desk in case she forgets to take it at home, the kind who has converted friends, family members, and strangers on the internet into subscribers. I was that customer.
I want to be honest with you about what happened this week, because I think you need to hear it from someone who genuinely loves your product.
When I went to your website this morning to pull a product link for a friend, I thought I had clicked onto a knockoff. Nothing was recognizable. Not the logo, not the colors, not the product. The amber glass jar I keep on my desk every single day had been replaced by a plastic seal-top pouch and a plastic spoon. I went to your Instagram to see if you had been hacked. You had not. You had rebranded.
I want to explain, as clearly as I can, what you lost in that decision.
The jar was not just packaging. It was a ritual. Open, scoop, close. Clean, contained, beautiful enough to live on my countertop where I would see it every morning and remember to take it. The rebranded pouch requires digging a spoon out of fine green powder, resealing something that does not seal cleanly, and storing it out of sight because it looks like a bag from the produce isle. The ritual is gone. And when the ritual is gone, the habit breaks. And when the habit breaks, the subscription cancels.
Beyond the functional loss, the rebrand has stripped away everything that made Daily Elements feel premium and worth the price point. It now looks like a run-of-the-mill green powder. The amber glass communicated quality, intention, and differentiation before a single word was read. The plastic pouch communicates one thing: cost-cutting. And once a customer thinks you are cutting costs, they start wondering where else you are cutting corners. Is the product still the same? The trust, once questioned, is difficult to rebuild.
Now, I want to be fair. I understand that a business must be profitable. If the glass jars became too expensive to produce and ship at scale, I empathize with that constraint. But I want to offer something constructive, because I believe there was a better path available.
Look at what Seed has done. They send one glass jar at the beginning of a subscription, and all subsequent deliveries arrive in refillable pouches that you pour directly into the jar. I receive three months of refills in a single shipment, which reduces costs on both ends. It is elegant, cost-effective, and it actually strengthens the brand story rather than dismantling it.
Daily Elements could have done something similar. A well-designed refillable paper pouch with a funnel opening for a clean, no-mess transfer. Something biodegradable. Something that could be composted or returned to the soil. You could have marketed this change as a step forward, not a retreat. Circular packaging. A brand that thinks about what happens after the product is consumed. Your customer would have celebrated that story and shared it with everyone she knows.
Instead, the story she is sharing right now is this: they switched to plastic to save money.
This change feels like a response to competitors like Gruns and AG1, and I understand the pressure. But I would argue that changing your packaging to resemble theirs is exactly the wrong move for this brand. Do you not want to stand out in a sea of green powders? The customer who seeks out a product with four ingredients and no fillers is someone who has already made a deliberate choice to care about what she puts in her body. She is almost certainly also someone who cares about not adding more plastic into her daily life.
You had an extraordinary marketing story available to you. A jar beautiful enough to live on your countertop, a jar that reminds you to take your greens daily. A brand that refuses unnecessary plastic because the customer who cares about what goes into her body also cares about what goes into the world. You could have said: we care about your body as much as you do. Four ingredients. No fillers. No plastic containers, so no microplastics seeping into your daily routine.
This was a story worth telling. That is a brand worth staying loyal to.
Instead, I am now halfway out the door. Not because the product itself has changed, but because nothing about the experience tells me anymore that you are worth trusting with my daily ritual.
I am asking you directly: please reconsider this decision. Introduce a refillable option. Give your loyal customers a reason to stay and a story to tell. You built something genuinely special and I would love a reason to stay.
With respect,
Maria Lee-Heller