Dive Brief:
- Citing customer feedback as motivation, DTC wellness company Apothékary announced a complete rebrand, which will go live Wednesday, per details emailed to Retail Dive.
- The rebrand includes new sustainable packaging, revamped customer experience models and a refreshed logo, website, design, typeface and other interactive features.
- Among the changes, the brand is launching refills for every product it offers and simplifying sizes to a single custom jar and refill format to promote sustainability. The company said the overall price of its products will remain about the same.
Dive Insight:
Apothékary felt the need to pause and refresh the entire platform after experiencing rapid growth. Since launching in 2020, Apothékary has served more than 250,000 customers across 54 countries, according to the company.
“We grew so fast the first few years that we needed to have a more 360 cohesive brand experience,” CEO and founder Shizu Okusa said in an email. “Our values towards using plants as medicine haven’t changed; however, we wanted to look better and do better. After listening to our customers about packing issues, the efficacy of our herbal formulas, and a need to keep improving our customer service, we knew we had to do better.”
Created by Okusa, a former Wall Street banker and wellness entrepreneur, Apothékary features plant-based products designed to aid men and women experiencing a range of health concerns around stress, sleep, beauty, gut health, skin, energy and immunity. The brand uses a variety of herbs in its products and this year began to offer tincture formulas in addition to powder.
“Through this rebrand, our herbal formulas are still thoughtfully crafted, but now there’s more science in mind and even more potent herbal formulations that are easier to access than they were on day one,” Okusa said. “Our packaging is more sustainable and has a variety of colors that represent the natural world.”
The Apothékary rebrand is happening as consumers prioritize wellness and retailers invest more in the space. Last year, Saks announced an online wellness shop, while Grove Collaborative earlier this year launched a wellness hub. And just last week, Nike introduced its Well Collective initiative.
Apothékary has previously opened pop-up shops to test new product, and is planning a new one this coming September in New York. Okusa also said the brand will form a wholesale partnership with a retailer in London beginning in July, though declined to provide further details, and is planning for further expansion in the U.S. in the coming months.
Okusa considers the brand to be at the intersection of beauty, food and healthcare. “I am sure this category will explode with the legalization of psychedelics, but our defensibility and moat will be our brand — hence this rebrand,” Okusa said.
Health and self-care have become so intertwined that one market research firm created an entire category around it. Piper Sandler last year estimated that the total market size is $650 billion globally and $170 billion in the U.S. alone. That includes beauty products, the medspa market, and vitamins and minerals.
