Care/of Personalized Vitamin Packs
I first heard about the vitamin subscription service, Care/of, from a fashion blogger I was following. It was obvious that she was sent the vitamins in exchange for the post, but as a lover of mildly pointless wellness and an easily influenced Instagram follower, I was intrigued.
Right away, I was impressed by the clean and personalized packaging. Why not incorporate some A+ graphic design into your vitamin routine? Before this, I had tried the Ritual vitamins, which were sent to me earlier in exchange for content (hypocrite I know), but they got me hooked on trendy vitamins. I tried out Ritual for two months and then stopped since it had gotten pretty expensive, however, several months after when I saw the post about Care/of, I felt the intense need to repeat the cycle.
I mainly saw their posts on Instagram. While their influencer posts are straight to the point and effective, in my opinion, their Instagram does not quite stand up to the aesthetics of Ritual's Instagram. The Care/of's clean packaging doesn't quite match up to the look of their Instagram, while the feed is good, I would have expected their brand image to be a little more put together. I am engaged with the brand through shared posts, but do not follow their Instagram (even though I follow Ritual's) as a result of this.
I will say, aside from the Instagram, Care/of's website is stunning and user friendly. Within a few minutes of showing my family the website, they were on their way to ordering their own months worth of personalized vitamins. In this instance, the website is stronger than the Instagram, which we aren't seeing as much anymore. The website introduces you to the vitamins and then asks you to take a quiz on personal questions about what your daily health habits look like and what you are concerned about, then it uses the results to recommend a pack of vitamins to you that you can learn more about later and adjust to your liking.
I was a big fan of the website... up until I had to cancel my subscription. The boxes packed of vitamins were coming faster than I could keep up with and I just about had to turn the website inside out to find a cancel subscription button. This time, their clean cut content was negatively effecting me and now I have a hurt image of their brand. I think that as a subscription based shop, you should make it very easy for your customer to change their mind, or else you start getting those ~scam vibes~.
I would recommend these vitamins to a friend, but not without a full run down of their competitor, Ritual vitamins, first. Ritual was a lot more user friendly in terms of dealing with the subscription service, and their Instagram aligns better with their overall image.
From this, I've learned the importance of thinking in the mindset of the customer. Its easy to get wrapped up in the business money mindset, "well if they find the cancel button then they'll cancel faster than their next box can accidentally show up!" I would also love a warning email before refilling the vitamins. I was looking to change my vitamin pack out with a different collection of vitamins and that was almost just as hard to do was it was to cancel, which should never be the case. I want transparency and efficiency with my brands or I will not be buying from them again. Ever since the famous times of Birchbox, a monthly beauty box, subscription services have been popping up everywhere with just about anything you could ask for. With new retailing strategies come new responsibilities. As trends and tech advance, it is more important now than ever to be user friendly or else you will be left behind. Patience is not at its highest point in 2019.
Aside from that, I did take a pack of my Care/of vitamins right before writing this post and dare I say... I feel great, but careful, you'll be drowning in ashwagandha.
Comments