We brought Nomad Botanicals to life within just a few months, but it’s a concept that has been in the works for a few decades. Our Founder, Carole, has been in the aromatherapy field for the past 25 years. Early on in her career, she was fortunate to be mentored by a world-renowned leader in aromatherapy, Kurt Schnaubelt, Ph.D. Through her work with him, and her work harvesting aromatic plants and distilling them with her husband, she developed a deep appreciation for authentic essential oils. Beyond her hands-on work with essential oils, she spent time working with plant-based wellness and lifestyle products in various companies, including EsScentuals and Aveda. Through all of these collective experiences, along with earning her MBA, the concept of Nomad Botanicals was born!
The Nomad Botanicals Dream Team materialized from people Carole worked with in various capacities. Josh, the Director of Production, has the unique skill of making old world soaps, utilizing modern technologies, in addition to running a world-class co-packing facility that is perfect for Nomad Botanicals! Jared, the Director of Finance, is the financial guru behind the exciting venture. Caroline, the Director of Marketing, is the heart and soul of the marketing and branding with Nomad Botanicals. Our vision is to bring vitality into people’s lives, transforming everyday routines into rituals, powered by the intelligence of gorgeous botanicals and inspired by the nomad journey we are all on in our own way.
As a plant-based brand, we are inspired first and foremost by nature. We chose the color palette, based on the depth of the jewel tones, to emulate the brilliant colors of plants and minerals found in nature. We also wanted to set ourselves apart during a time when so many other self-care products have chosen neutral tones in their packaging. Our products are made with lively botanicals, which we wanted to reflect in our design through our vibrant yet classic packaging! We find inspiration everywhere in nature, whether we’re hiking through the forests and spot a patch of bright green moss, or at the farmer’s market picking fresh oranges. We’re surrounded by beautiful botanicals all around us, so we notice the earth’s color palette and let that inspire us in our products and design.
Top Tip: When designing your packaging, it’s a good idea to check what color palettes your competitors are using. This ensures that your design stands out from the crowd and won’t get confused with anyone else! You can find more design tips on our blog.
When we were designing Nomad Botanicals, we had an endless number of directions we wanted to explore. To funnel our ideas we created a mood board of images, concepts, and color schemes that spoke to us. Our mood board included pictures of women in international cities, flowers on a hillside, and vintage apothecary bottles. These images helped set the tone for our company’s color palette, fonts, and packaging design. It’s important to us that our brand emulates vibrancy and texture, from the botanicals we use to the feelings our products evoke. Now that our company has launched, we still find ourselves returning to the mood board for inspiration and to make sure that any future products, new packaging, or content that is posted on social media is cohesive and sends a strong brand message and feeling across all channels.
Sustainability is threaded throughout our business, from our ingredients to our packaging. Our essential oils and other raw materials are sustainably grown, harvested, and produced. We have also been mindful to choose packaging with as much glass as possible, so we are minimizing our footprint. The only product we have that is all plastic is our Foaming Hand and Body Wash. We chose a plastic bottle so that it would not break in the sink or shower. To offset the impact of this packaging, we offer a refill service so that the original bottle and hearty dispenser can be reused many times. We were also conscientious about the packaging materials we selected. We opted for recycled paper products vs. plastic bubble wrap to demonstrate our commitment to sustainability all the way to the unboxing experience.
Top tip: Sometimes, it’s difficult to avoid using plastic and other non-renewable materials in your packaging. However, offering refill options like Nomad Botanicals is an excellent way to keep your packaging in use as long as possible!
Speaking of which...we are so proud of the way our noissue tissue paper and stickers stand out in the box! Our customers consistently tell us how special they feel opening their packages...they feel like they are receiving gifts, even when they are ordered for themselves! One other special treat that we send our customers with their first order are sustainable seed cards with instructions to plant it and watch it bloom into wildflowers! These bright blooms not only add beauty to our customers’ surroundings; they also attract pollinators like our beloved honeybees!
Carole and Caroline worked hand-in-hand every step of the way in developing the Nomad Botanicals brand. We wanted quality to be represented from the ingredients to the packaging, so we invested time in researching the best sources. From the oils in our products to unique packaging (like our signature custom-made cinnamon box for our diffuser oil collection) to the final wrapping, we feature exquisite quality. We were thrilled to discover the customizable options that noissue offered with tissue paper and stickers. It was important to us to feature our bee logo, because what those winged beauties stand for is at the heart of our mission. Our nomad journey is devoted to caring for the synergistic ecosystem that allows vibrant botanicals in our products to reach people, and pollinators like honeybees are essential in that dynamic.
There are so many luxury brands that produce such a wasteful amount of packaging, and we wanted to set the tone for the next generation of luxury products by including sustainable packaging without having to sacrifice design and the unboxing experience. Since we are primarily an online shop and our customers are not always able to feel and smell our products, we wanted to give them a beautiful unboxing experience that wouldn’t hurt the planet in doing so. We were really excited when we found noissue, because we were able to easily upload our design and view what the tissue paper would look like before we submitted it. This allowed us to plan our whole packaging collection at the same time to create a sense of cohesiveness.
Our custom tissue paper and stickers have added an extra level of beautiful design to our packaging. It is the first thing our customers see when they open up a box from us, so it elevates their first impression with surprise and delight. We wanted to go above and beyond with our packaging without being wasteful, and noissue helped us achieve that. By hand-wrapping all of our products with our custom tissue paper and stickers, we’ve added more thought and value to the unboxing experience, which makes receiving a Nomad Botanicals package all the more special!