Betoken, A Brand Designed To Ease The Stresses Of Adulting, Grows Up As It Rebrands From Good Jane

In January, Liz Kirby swung her legs up on a couch in her Portland, Maine home to settle in for a video shot by Vuk Multimedia, a company she’d connected with in a previous stage of her career doing website and graphic design for various companies, to introduce Betoken, a new version of her CBD brand Good Jane.

She appeared comfortable, but she definitely wasn’t. About three months earlier, Kirby received a cease-and-desist letter from a beauty brand with a similar name to Good Jane demanding it stop using the name. Prior to the federal Farm Bill that legalized the hemp trade in the United States, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office wasn’t accepting trademarks on CBD brands, and Good Jane, established in 2018, fell into the prohibited class. Right before Kirby received the cease-and-desist letter, she had scheduled a call with her lawyer to revisit Good Jane’s trademark protection. The letter rendered the call mute.

The backstory was on Kirby’s mind as she sat for the video shoot. How much should she tell Good Jane’s customers about what sparked the change? Kirby felt Good Jane was a great brand name. How could she make sure she sounded enthusiastic about the switch to Betoken that she had no intention of embarking on not long ago? Kirby decided she’d be open with her audience about what happened, but, still a bit apprehensive about the entire ordeal, it was tricky for her to set the proper tone. It took some 30 takes to finalize the video.

In the video, which is posted on Betoken’s site, Kirby admits, “I wasn’t sure how I was going to approach talking about the rebrand.” She goes on to explain, “Nothing was wrong was with the old brand or the old message, and nothing has really changed except for the packaging and how it looks and, in the process of finding this out and redeveloping the brand, we have really fine-tuned the brand message.”

On Feb. 1, Good Jane officially turned into Betoken, a name meaning “a sign of” chosen to continue the brand’s nod to the cannabis industry that provides the CBD in its formulas, and Kirby had finally come to terms with the shift. In fact, she realized it was the best move for the brand.

“When it was like you could fight this or you could just rebrand, I said, ‘You know what, I’m going to take this as a sign that maybe I should think differently,’” recounts Kirby. “If I ever wanted to have a product at Sephora, there is probably one space on the shelf for a ‘Jane’ with CBD in it. Ultimately, it will be good for business.” CBD beauty brand Saint Jane debuted at Sephora in 2019.

“The reason I wanted to lean into our very specific niche is because that’s the only way we can attempt to stand out.”

For Kirby, thinking differently meant examining Good Jane’s customers closely. At the brand’s launch, she’d imagined them to be 25 to 35 year olds comfortable with marijuana who were perhaps recently married and had begun to consider having kids. Instead, they are 35 to 65 year olds who might have smoked pot back in the day and are returning to the cannabis sector to handle aches and pains, and the anxieties of existence burdened by professional and personal responsibilities. The rebrand gave Kirby the opportunity to have her brand communicate with them in a manner they can relate to.

“They don’t say AF. They are really real. They don’t want any sugar coating. They want you to talk to them directly and say, ‘Listen, I know exactly how you feel because I was up at 4 a.m. with my kid last night, too, and I’m tired and want something to help me not yell at them,’” says Kirby, noting Betoken’s boxes feature the slogan, “Adulting just got a whole lot easier.” She adds, “The reason I wanted to lean into our very specific niche is because that’s the only way we can attempt to stand out. If we are one of the only ones identifying with people for whom 8 p.m. is too late to start a movie, that sets us apart from the other CBD companies selling to anyone.”

In an acknowledgement that women constituted a large majority of Good Jane’s sales, Kirby also tweaked the packaging to be more feminine and colorful with assistance from designer Joanna Scontras. Betoken’s Hello Mellow Capsules, Nighty Night Capsules, Not This Month PMS Cream and Pain Pain Go Away are encased in yellow, blue, orange and green, respectively. Hello Mellow Capsules is Betoken’s bestseller and has been especially strong during the pandemic. Aside from a $2 key to enables consumers to get every last drop out of Betoken’s tubes, the brand’s prices run from $14.95 for a bath bomb to $49.99 for the capsules.

From the outset, Betoken paired whole plant botanicals with CBD, a formulation choice that elevates its prices. “We don’t put a lot of fluff in there. It is really our cost times two for wholesale. The creams are less because I wanted to have something that was under $50. I really wanted it to be $38, but it just didn’t work,” says Kirby. She emphasizes Betoken’s blend of CBD with whole plant botanicals is relevant for the current market. Kirby explains. “CBD is no longer the ingredient, but an ingredient. It’s more like vitamin c or hyaluronic acid. It’s something you use in conjunction with other stuff.”

Once the pandemic hit and stores shuttered, 50% of Good Jane’s sales fizzled. Probably the hugest retail bummer for the brand was its truncated relationship with Neiman Marcus, where it sent a large order in February 2020. “In March 2020, they sent me an email saying they were filing for bankruptcy, and we weren’t going to get paid for it,” recalls Kirby. “That was supposed to be our big break. It was awful. Then, we had 30 to 40 of our smaller boutiques around the country close. Maybe half of them won’t come back.”

Against the backdrop of pandemic-era retail struggles, Good Jane and now Betoken have concentrated on e-commerce, search engine optimization, affiliate marketing and e-mail blast consistency. Kirby has pulled away from frequent promotions and initiated The Good Mood Club, a program that allows members to save 15% on Betoken orders; obtain free shipping, discounts from partner brands and free gifts with purchase; and have access to friends and family sales for $9.99 per month.

“Trust your customers. They are not necessarily just with you because of the name of your business.”

By June, the brand’s goal is to reach $20,000 in monthly sales. The sales will be a salve for the expenses of the rebrand. Betoken has shored up its intellectual property by spending around $12,000 on legal fees, and Kirby mentions it was dealt a $5,000 blow due to aluminum tubes with Good Jane on them she ordered in advance of the rebrand not being serviceable for Betoken.

Despite the retail difficulties of 2020, Kirby remains bullish on Betoken’s retail possibilities. She points to Whole Foods and Sephora as dream retail showcases for the brand. From an assortment perspective, expansion into an eye cream is on the table. Kirby says, “I feel that is a really logical product for people who are looking to make their adulting life easier.”

Speaking of adulting, she’s done plenty as she’s navigated revamping her brand. “I have taken all the Hello Mellow to get through it,” says Kirby. “It’s been extremely stressful. Having a cease-and-desist and dealing with that five weeks from Black Friday, that was my, ‘I don’t want to be a grown-up anymore, I might throw in the towel moment.’”

Fellow entrepreneurs Mia Chae Reddy, founder of Dehiya Beauty, and Rachel Daugherty, founder of Fine Healing Goods, encouraged Kirby to persist. She says among the biggest lessons from her rebranding experience is, “Find yourself a girl group that you can rely on for questions and help because everyone has their own set of skills.”

Another big lesson she highlights is, “Trust your customers. They are not necessarily just with you because of the name of your business. If you have a good product, they will stick by you. Don’t worry so much about how they are going to react to a change. I was worried there was going to be floods of unfollowing, and it wasn’t like that. They were very positive. As Mia told me, showing your vulnerability is not a bad thing.”