The Hand-Drawn Packaging System.
The challenge
The packaging looked like a supplement, not a kitchen project.
Dense ingredient lists and a clinical typeface tested well for trust in early interviews, but on an actual retail shelf next to competitors with hand-drawn illustration and warm color, Marrow read as sterile and intimidating — exactly wrong for a product meant to feel like a fun weekend project, not a medical routine.
“It looked like something my doctor would prescribe, not something I’d want to give as a gift.”
— First-time buyer, in-store intercept interview
The Hand-Drawn Packaging System.
The Process
Watched people shop the actual shelf. We set up a mock retail display with five competitors and Marrow’s existing box and filmed twenty people shopping it. Marrow got picked up last, every time.
Interviewed people who loved the product but never bought it again. The gap wasn’t the kit itself — repeat customers were enthusiastic. It was getting anyone to try it once.
Tested illustration against photography. Early rounds assumed photography would feel more premium. Illustration tested better across every age group we talked to — it read as approachable, not clinical.
Kept the ingredient transparency, changed everything around it. The trust-building ingredient list stayed; the typeface, color, and imagery around it changed completely.
Solution
A hand-drawn identity system. Illustrated jars, vegetables, and bubbling ferment motifs replace the clinical photography across every SKU.
A warm, high-contrast palette. Built to read from three feet away on a crowded shelf, not just up close on a desk.
The ingredient list stayed, redesigned. Full transparency preserved, but set in a friendlier typeface with more breathing room instead of a dense clinical block.
A first-ferment guide printed inside the lid. The most common first-use question — “how do I know it’s working” — answered right where people would see it, not buried in a separate booklet.
Outcome
Shelf pickup rate in the mock display test went from last of six to second of six after the redesign. The clearer signal: first-time online purchase conversion rose 44% in the first two months post-launch — the real business goal, since the retail test only mattered as a proxy for getting more people to try the kit at all.
What I’d do differently. The illustration system was built around vegetables common in kimchi and miso, Marrow’s two flagship kits. When they launched a sourdough kit six months later, the existing illustration language didn’t stretch cleanly to bread, and they ended up commissioning a one-off style for it. I’d have designed the system around fermentation as a process from the start, not around specific ingredients.
Shelf pickup rate (mock display test)
+4 rank
First-time online purchase conversion
+44%
People stopped picking us up out of curiosity and put us down. Now they actually buy it.
Wren Calloway
Chief Innovation Officer