Launched direct-to-consumer and met with much positive reception, The Nue Co. was quick to emerge as a darling of the beauty and wellness categories. One of the only companies at the intersection of these two spaces, its unique product line exemplified a holistic approach by offering both topicals and ingestibles. Finding success as a D2C brand positioned the company for growth, but in order to take it to the next level, they realized that they had to expand beyond the single channel of their website sales and transition to an omnichannel operation. After the company secured retail distribution with Sephora ©, the team enlisted Combo’s help for strategy and design in advance of its on-shelf debut.

Though the company had been doing very well, entering these crowded channels meant refining the brand so that it could sit on the shelf next to all those other competitors. Combo’s strategy team began by sifting through everything. Given that the brand had been built from the ground up, it had grown organically; elements had been added one after the other, leading to some confusion and the absence of one clear message. Combo strategists worked alongside the client to identify a core brand truth that could secure a strategic position and be central to all products, messaging, visual assets, packaging and other brand elements.

Doubling down on The Nue Co.’s presence in both wellness and beauty, Combo focused the strategy work on unpacking the dual approach of the product line. Including both ingestibles and topicals epitomized a distinctive ethos of inner (wellness) and outer (beauty) being one in the same. Take, for instance, the ingestibles that target gut health, effectively helping the skin. Or the topical sprays that soothe stress, promoting sleep or even aiding muscle recovery. This holistic logic was rooted in The Nue Co.’s origins, aligned with the market position it wanted to sustain on a larger scale, and provided a strong, clear basis on which to build the brand identity.

Packaging was treated as an opportunity to reinforce the daily ritual of beauty and wellness routines. In the spirit of simplicity, unnecessary elements were stripped out (plastic, for example, as a move towards more sustainability). Here, again, the connection between the inner and the outer was a centerpoint for concepting. Building on the idea of an integrated and holistic system, the rigorous design process considered how the sensory aspects of the packaging—the fit of the box tops, the paper feel, how the cap twists, the function of a fragrance bottle —could act as ritual and reminder, extending the customer experience from meeting the products on the shelf to using it daily at home.