The second steep: Talking brand fatigue with Emily Erb and Anna Morton of Leaves and Flowers.
Sometimes passion for your own brand can wear a little thin— especially if you’re the one toiling behind the scenes. I spoke with Emily Erb and Anna Morton of Bay Area tea company Leaves and Flowers about creative restlessness, abandoned redesigns, and recommitting to your brand after living with it for years. At the end of the day it’s all about maintaining a loyal customer base and staying true to yourself.
ahm: First off, how did Leaves and Flowers start?
Anna: I can never remember the moment of conception but it feels like it chose me. I knew I wanted to work with plants and I made the decision to go to school to study herbs. I wanted to create something that wasn’t an extraction from plants, like a face cream, but something more tactile and experiential that allowed you to be part of the extraction process. Tea turned out to be that thing. Emily and I were becoming friends at the time and we started talking about why tea, especially herbal tea, was often overlooked. Even at restaurants where you’d think they would care about their tea program, it was rare to see a thoughtful tea menu. So we saw an opportunity to do something beautiful with plants.
Emily: I was working in coffee and I didn’t feel great about what I was selling and ingesting. I started to feel a disconnect with coffee and wanted to move into something that felt supportive in different ways. Part of that was wanting to start my own business. I wanted some control over when I worked and how much I worked. I also wanted a better relationship to what I was producing.
ahm: What came first: the desire to own a tea company or the vision of the brand?
Anna: Definitely not the vision of the brand. We both had a feeling for what we wanted to create so maybe in a sense that is “brand.” But we didn’t think about it in that way. I didn’t have any training in product development or design or strategy or branding. It was more about following this thread of working with plants in a simple, accessible, and elemental way. And then it was about building a business that was inline with our values and who we are.
Emily: We are both aesthetic people and drawn to beauty. So we do have strong opinions about what we visually wanted the packaging and brand to look like. When we talked during the conception of the company, we wanted it to feel like a full experience. In the process of making tea, everything slows down and takes time. We wanted our customers to feel like what we were making was special — not just what is inside the package but the outside of the package as well. That was important to us and we wanted it to come through in every component.
ahm: How has the brand changed over time?
Anna: I remember in the beginning we talked a lot about how someone received a package from an online store and how they perceive it. We thought about the little pieces that go into that experience. It’s a very personal thing because you see the thoughtfulness behind a brand. But now, it’s harder to see. It’s more difficult to see what the experience is from a customer’s point of view. When you’re so entrenched in what you’re doing, it’s hard to know how others perceive it. You’re doing so much like taking out the trash or doing paperwork, it’s hard to see it with fresh eyes because so much is happening behind the scenes. I lose my inspiration and ambition and drive if it’s not beautiful so we’re trying to refine that all the time.
ahm: Do you make decisions based on what your audience wants or what you want?
Emily: Good question. That makes me think about how we went through this process of changing our logo but pulled back in the 11th hour. We are established now with our current customers and I do think we are a design-forward tea brand. We had a serious discussion about whether we wanted to drastically change our look, especially because of our wholesale accounts and current customers. We thought, “will we lose some of that business and are we ok with that?” That is more of a consideration now than when we first launched. Back then we were more interested in what resonates with us.
But at the end of the day, it’s important to ask if you feel good about what you’re putting into the world and stand behind your product. That’s very important to us and the changes we make. For example, we’re changing our packaging to be more eco-friendly. That’s more of a personal choice. I do think it will appeal to our customers but it is a change that is more important for us.
Anna: I think in the beginning we looked at ourselves as our ideal customers. That was the best way to go about designing a brand. It felt more like an art piece. Now we have more information about our customers. With the attempted redesign, I felt like we were missing a big piece of the market. I wanted to be more accessible, a little less sophisticated. We wanted a hand drawn logo and illustration on the package with lots of color — every element was going to change. We went through a two-year process with our illustrator and friend, but she was the one who told us not to do it at the last minute. She liked the new design and the direction but said, “when I tell people you’re changing your design they ask why. They said it’s already so good!” So we started to understand that people really like it and it works.
ahm: Do you think having more information about your customer is a good or bad thing?
Anna: In that situation it felt like a good thing.
Emily: For me, it was a reminder to be clear about why we’re doing something. We’re both creative people and sometimes we get bogged down in the logistics of running a company. You start to find the things that don’t resonate with you anymore. But you might be the only one feeling that. We learned that our audience actually didn’t feel that way so it was a good lesson to learn. We wanted to refresh something that wasn’t working for us.
ahm: There is a term for what you’re talking about called brand fatigue. Your audience doesn’t see the brand as much as you do so they aren’t tired of it.
Anna: Yeah, it is similar to how we construct our tea blends. We don’t add something for color or to increase the number of ingredients unless it improves the flavor of the blend. It’s always about enhancing the product and experience for our customers. Otherwise there is no need. That was how the redesign felt. Emily and I were pushing it really hard and it took this friend of ours to talk us out of it.
Emily: I feel like I learned a lot even on a personal level. Maybe what you have is exactly right in front of you and you just need to recommit to it.
ahm: Seems a lot like dating.
Emily: Exactly! And it’s nice to run a business and learn about this in real time. It’s risky in some ways but I’m not sure I would have received the same knowledge if it were conceptual or theoretical. It’s so immediate.
ahm: So instead of shaking up all your branding, have you started pulling on different variables to see what changes? Or being creative in new ways?
Emily: We started thinking about things we can offer our customers. Maybe that’s a zine or something more tactile. We’ve struggled a lot blasting people’s inboxes with newsletters. But there is so much we don’t share with our customers. Like this past year we took a trip to Japan and we didn’t share that much outside of Instagram. So I want to try and connect more with our customers.
And our branding will change just with our new packaging and how everything will sit on the package. Even though the logo will stay the same, it will feel very different and more functional.
Anna: We want to add to what we have and the foundation of the brand. How do we build on that? We don’t need to strip it all away and rebuild. We need to ask ourselves: what will enhance the brand we already have?
Click here to learn more about Leaves and Flowers.
A Hundred Monkeys recommends the Breathe Blend, but you really can’t go wrong with anything from Leaves and Flowers.
