new packaging, new website & new razor colour

I’m pinching myself as I type this, but it’s true! Our new website is live and we have finally launched our new packaging. These projects have taken us well over a year and we are over the moon to be sharing both. 

I think it’s important to start by saying well kept is a small self-funded business. We are value driven and have always done the very best we can within our means. This has meant many a homemade solution; figuring things out the hard way; and growth largely determined by what we could manage within our limited time and resources. Our original website was put together by us (and many online tutorials) and our packaging was a mix of ready made boxes, the neighbourhood printshop, and glue guns. Nothing has been efficient or perfect, but what we had (at least in our minds) looked acceptably professional. 

PACKAGING

As our business began to grow, we quickly realized that what we were doing wasn’t manageable long term and began to search for a solution. Everything is packaged so we didn’t foresee it being a particularly difficult project… boy were we wrong! While everything is packaged, most is done cheaply, without regard for the environment and often without a thought through customer experience. We were determined to create something that honoured our values, was beautiful to look at, wouldn’t cost an arm and a leg (a cost that is shouldered by customers), and had as little impact on the environment as possible.

The results are more easily shown than explained (please do take the time to scroll through the images), but there are a few points worth highlighting:

/ the packaging was designed (lind studio) and printed (hemlock & summit) in Vancouver
/ the card stock is FSC certified, uncoated and carbon neutral
/ none of the protective packaging is made of foam or plastic; we use fluted kraft inserts to protect our bottles and mycelium to pad our razors
/ mycelium is made of mushrooms: we literally grow mushrooms in a mold shaped to perfectly secure your razor in place! which means this is 100% compostable
/ all of our bottles are glass and we encourage you to get creative and reuse them throughout your home
/ and we still produce, assemble and package everything up in our warehouse in Vancouver :)

WEBSITE

Again, as we began to grow we soon realized our website wasn’t offering customers all we wanted to offer. We spent a long time sourcing a design studio we aligned with and were thrilled when we finally landed on Faculty. Vancouver based, and the creators of some of our favourite sites and publications, Faculty’s work is stunning. They were a joy to work with and we are so so pleased with how the website came together. Again, difficult to describe in words (please take some time to explore), but a few things worth mentioning below:

/ we added a safety razor page and an instructions page to walk you through the why and the how of using a safety razor
/ we’ve highlighted some of the ways we’re trying to reduce our environmental footprint and the impact we create as a business
/ on each product page, we have outlined specific categories that we wanted to create more transparency on - what ingredients are included/excluded, packaging details, ethical production, and end of life
/ the website has a light and dark mode (dark mode uses significantly less energy–think of it like turning the lights off)
/ we used less coding, less fonts, smaller images, and reduced video content–again, to create less energy consumption in the running of the website

Now for the extra exciting part… to celebrate both the new packaging and website, we’ve launched a new razor colour: kelp. The green is an almost exact match to packaging and is a feature colour throughout our new website. We love it and hope you will too!