"I bought this for my dad"
About 30% of our orders ship to a different address than they are billed to. We knew this from the data before we knew the why. We started reading the order notes.
The why is the same story, told three ways.
Karen, 54, Maryland
"My mother is 79. She's on three blood pressure meds she doesn't really understand and a statin that's been making her arms hurt for two years. I'm not telling her to stop anything. I'm just trying to find one thing that's good for her, that I picked, that I can trust. The drops are something we do on the phone — I take mine, she takes hers, then we keep talking. It's a thing we share."
What Karen taught us: the supplement, for her, isn't really about the supplement. It's about agency. She has been watching her mother be moved through a healthcare system that doesn't have time for her. The dropper is one decision Karen got to make, on her mother's behalf, that wasn't a prescription.
Tom, 61, Connecticut
"I take it because my wife's been saying for two years I should take something. So I take it. She watches me take it. I'd rather take this than have the conversation about why I'm not taking it."
What Tom taught us: a lot of compliance, in the world of "guys in their 60s who should be taking better care of themselves," is actually compliance with the spouse. We design for the person who actually opens the bottle. That person is, statistically, often Tom's wife.
Sarah, 47, Oregon
"My dad died six weeks before his 70th birthday. Heart attack. He'd been to the doctor that month and everything looked fine. I bought this for my husband, and then for my brother, and then for myself. I send a bottle to my mom every two months. She doesn't really get the supplement part. She gets that I'm thinking about her."
What Sarah taught us: this category, this product, this small act of buying it — for a lot of our members, it's a way of grieving a parent they lost too early by trying to save the parent they have left.
Why we're writing this
We get a lot of email asking us about the science, the dose, the third-party testing, the studies on hawthorn and beetroot and K2. We answer all of those. They matter.
But the actual reason most people are taking Pepperton, when we listen carefully, is not "I read a study on vitexin." It is closer to: "I love someone, and this is a thing I can do."
We try to remember that when we make decisions. We try to make a product that is good enough to be worthy of that act of love. We try not to write copy that uses the word "love" in it, because that would cheapen what's actually going on.
Mostly, we listen. And then we ship the next batch.
— If you bought a bottle for someone you love, write to us at hello@peppertonhealth.com. We read every email. The team and I read them out loud, on the first Friday of every month, in the kitchen.