Highwire’s New Look & Feel: But Why?
While many folks have told us how much they love the new look and feel of our logo, merch, and packaging, the change has left some of our best and longest term fans feeling cold. I want to offer some insight on where we are coming from, and answer some FAQs.
“Has Highwire been taken over by a corporate entity?”
No. We’re two of the same three owners who founded the business. We’re still local, still roughly 40 people doing what we have always loved. We did want to button up our look and feel however to represent the work we have done to become more professional and intentional with our products and workforce.
“Why did you move away from compostable packaging?”
We didn’t. We sought packaging that was more truly compostable. See previous blog post for the longer version of this process.
“The new images and colors are off putting. Why did you change from the beloved former designs?”
This one is tough to answer briefly, but it comes down to us wanting to re-energize ourselves around what we could do going forward. We had been working with the old (mostly) monochrome designs for 10+ years and they came to represent our past more than what we are up to now. We’ve been changed by the last 12 years of experiences and wanted to reflect that. The colors and more abstract designs represent new light, new hope, and possibilities to us. We understand they may never win everyone’s hearts or match aesthetics, but know that internally they are a source of much excitement for what is to come for us.
“Why did you shrink the size of the bags again?”
This answer is the least satisfying one of all. It’s the USPS. We ship out a not-trivial portion of the coffee we sell, and at the end of 2021, the postal service raised the shipping rates considerably for packages weighing more than 12 oz (which our packages did because of the shipping package). This made it unaffordable for us to ship a bag of coffee to most places even with the $5 we charge you for shipping. So we switched to an 11 oz bag size for shipment reasons. With our roasting, production, fulfillment and delivery team being 4-5 people, it would be too big a lift to have them create different sized bags for our brick and mortar shops versus our bags shipped all over the United States. To make matters worse, green coffee prices spiked higher than they had been since Highwire was in business starting with the 2022 crop season and that caused our prices to go up in many areas when we had intended to lower most of them. So it's a painful double whammy for everyone, and I sincerely apologize for the real impact it has on your ability to enjoy our coffee.