Native's Brand Design Success

Moiz Ali shares how he created the Native deodorant brand identity by borrowing design elements from successful DTC companies.

"When I was launching Native, it took me about 3 days to do the whole website. I decided I wasn't going to hire a logo designer and spend a fortune building a logo and spending a lot of money on branding. I stole the logo that Harry's has, which is just their name written out in a font. I did the same thing.

I couldn't steal their colors as well because that would be too blatant, so I just stole the colors of another website which was Casper at the time because they were doing really well. That's how the font and the colors came together to be what Native is today.

What's funny is right next to where we were located was Native Juice Co. I would walk by that store all the time. When I was packing deodorants in my apartment for the first 6 months or year of the business, I'd walk by Native Juice Co with bags filled with boxes of deodorants. The post office would ask 'Is this from nextdoor, the juice company?'

Two and a half years into the business, the woman who started Native Juice Co came to our office saying 'I'm getting so many phone calls for your business, for customer service issues, where's my package?' People were just googling 'native san francisco.' We didn't have a phone number posted so she would get 40 calls a day. I eventually told the doorman of the building not to let her up anymore, though we still ordered juice from her to our office."