Tumeric: Elixir of Life Rebrands as Temple Turmeric

Organic-minded proofreaders everywhere, rejoice!

Just two months after getting a $3 million growth investment from Boulder Investment Group, fast-growing Whole Foods darling Tumeric: Elixir of Life is readying a rebrand that will, among other things, finally correct a pesky spelling error in the name of the line’s key, root-based ingredient (it was made intentionally as a way to try to build ownership of that ingredient).

Renamed as Temple Turmeric, the brand will debut at Natural Products Expo West next week with a new label that emphasizes and centers the mandala artwork on the labels of the high pressure processed, juice-and-nutrient-rich product line.

“We feel the rebrand is a key growth point for the business,” said founder Daniel Sullivan,  “And we felt like there was a limit to how far we could scale our current branding, since we were essentially branding our core commodity.”

Temple Turmeric Family Line

The brand’s messaging is also evolving, promoting the idea of “positive inflammation response” as a way of expressing the potential nutritional benefit from consuming the root, which comes in formulas that are intended to provide synergistic benefit to the consumer.

“This whole thing is really about wanting people to gain a deeper perspective on their bodies,” noted founder Daniel Sullivan. “That all ties into that ancient wisdom of body as temple. We think there’s strong communication there.  It’s about recreating ourselves, creating a new connection for our consumers and industry partners, and implying a deeper way to connect with our bodies and with our journey.”

In addition to the rebrand, the company is emphasizing a new, four-SKU Super Blend set, which features non-dairy smoothies Bullet Brew Turkish Coffee, Turmeric Golden Mylk, Matcha Latte and Mexican Chocolate. They are currently all exclusive to Whole Foods. Expansion is being fueled by the Boulder Brands investment, which also allowed Temple to invest more deeply in its supply chain, including its proprietary Hawaiian Oana Turmeric ingredient.

There’s some risk inherent in changing the name of a brand this far down the road, Sullivan acknowledged — the product, now at 12 varieties, has been national in Whole Foods for about two years in its current form, and the company is more than five years old. But the new name and positioning — shepherded by the company’s COO, Purely Righteous Brands’ Greg Fleishman, has been designed to keep many of the product’s visual identifiers in place on the label, while maintaining the company’s bottle shape and cut confusion among consumers.

It was a concern, Fleishman acknowledged, but was handled with what he termed “baby steps” and had been meticulously explored  with core consumers, as well as investors, retailers, distributors and key stakeholders in the brand.

“Temple is our destination,” Sullivan added. “In a perfect world we’d have been Temple from the beginning. It really magnetizes our audience around this pure value of purification.”