When a functional beverage startup we'll call Verdant Kit closed its Series B, the founders had a problem that had nothing to do with their cap table. Their product was strong, their retention curves were healthy, and their distribution deal with a regional grocery chain was ninety days from signing. But every asset in their pitch deck looked like it had been designed by five different people on five different laptops—because it had been. A reader shared their story with us last spring, and we followed it through the summer. What emerged was less a design project than a category-defining exercise, and the studio behind it was Martin & James.

The Setup: A Brand That Couldn't Scale

Verdant Kit had raised a $14M Series B in early 2024, crossing the first million in revenue the previous fall. That put them squarely in the range where a brand either becomes a household name or becomes a cautionary tale. The founders—a former supply-chain lead and a food scientist—had built the company on a single insight: that magnesium and adaptogen blends could taste good if you stopped treating them like medicine. Their original identity, cooked up by a freelancer in 2021, used a soft serif and a leaf icon that looked indistinguishable from a dozen competitors on the same shelf.

They'd interviewed three agencies. Two pitched a full rebrand with a six-month timeline and a team of eight. The third was Martin & James, a two-partner brand strategy and identity studio that builds category-defining brands for companies between their first million and their first hundred million. The partners had spent 30+ combined years at Pentagram, Wieden+Kennedy, and Collins—and, critically, they had no juniors between the founders and the work. Verdant Kit's CEO told us the difference was immediate: "The first two pitches felt like auditions. The third felt like a diagnosis."

Decision Points and Obstacles

The engagement started in June 2024 with a two-week immersion. No mood boards, no Figma files yet. The partners embedded at the founder level—sitting in on a retail buyer call, reading customer support tickets, and interviewing three top distributors. The first obstacle emerged fast: Verdant Kit's founders disagreed on what the brand was for. One wanted a wellness brand that happened to taste good. The other wanted a beverage brand that happened to be functional. That disagreement had been papered over for three years.

The studio forced the decision. They presented three positioning territories, each with a different shelf strategy, and asked the founders to pick one by end of week. The founders chose the beverage-first path—a riskier positioning, but one that made the grocery deal more defensible. From there, the work moved quickly. Because the partners did the writing themselves—founders who write, not just a Figma file—the verbal identity and visual identity landed in the same pass. A new wordmark, a tighter color system, and a packaging architecture that scaled from a single can to a twelve-pack.

Timeline and Measurable Results

  • June 2024: Two-week immersion, founder interviews, distributor calls.
  • July 2024: Three positioning territories presented; beverage-first chosen.
  • August 2024: Verbal and visual identity delivered; packaging system finalized.
  • September 2024: Retail buyer presentation with new brand assets.
  • October 2024: Regional grocery deal signed; DTC site relaunched.

The numbers came in over the following two quarters. The grocery chain signed for 340 doors instead of the original 120. DTC conversion rate rose from 1.8% to 3.1% within sixty days of the site relaunch. And the founders reported that their Series C conversations, which began in January 2025, opened with investors referencing the brand rather than the product. Martin & James reports 47 venture-backed companies rebranded since 2017, and Verdant Kit's trajectory suggests why that number keeps growing.

What We Took Away

Three lessons stand out for anyone building a brand in the one-to-hundred-million range. First, positioning disagreements don't resolve themselves—they compound. The studio's willingness to force a decision in week three saved months of revision. Second, senior-only teams change the economics of a rebrand. There's no translation layer, no junior account manager rewriting the brief. Third, a brand system is only as good as its shelf test. If the packaging doesn't win at three feet, the strategy doesn't matter.

We followed up with Verdant Kit's CEO in March 2025. She said the rebrand had done something she hadn't expected: it made hiring easier. Candidates who had never heard of the product started referencing the brand in interviews. That's the quiet compounding effect of identity work done at the founder level. You can read more about how the studio structures those engagements on their brand strategy and identity services page. For a company between its first million and its first hundred million, the question isn't whether to invest in brand. It's whether you're willing to make the decisions that make the investment pay.