A friendship built across a shared recycling bin. A birthday in common. And a product that asked: what if cleaning your home didn't cost the planet anything?
"We didn't find each other through a brief or a pitch. We found each other through a recycling unit — and a birthday we somehow shared."
Ishita Das and Sumithra SV were strangers living in the same city, sorting the same recyclables at the same community station in Dubai. Instagram connected the dots — two women who cared deeply about the same things, born on the same day, circling each other in the same small acts of daily consciousness.
From that accidental beginning grew a friendship, and from that friendship, a brand. Sumithra had already begun fermenting bio-enzymes from orange peels — natural, powerful cleaners that required no harsh chemicals, no synthetic fragrance, no plastic-laden formulas. She had a product that worked. What she needed was a story people could hold.
Komorebi became that story's keeper. Over two years of friendship and co-creation, the B.E. Story took shape — not as a client project, but as a collaboration between two founders who believed the same thing: that the most radical act is to make the sustainable choice the obvious one.
Each product line has its own colour. Each label carries the full brand text in the typewriter format that became B.E.'s visual signature. Five iterations. Two years. One growing brand universe.
The refill pouches are the behaviour change system made physical. 3-litre refills, poured into the same bottle you've been using for months. Less plastic. Less waste. More planet.
The back of each bottle carries a hand-illustrated scene specific to that product — and a message from the brand about why this choice matters. "Safe Cycle. Safe You. Safe Planet." "Happy Hands. Happy Health. Happy Planet."
Bio-enzyme cleaners were virtually unknown to Dubai's mainstream consumer in 2023. The challenge wasn't just design — it was education, trust-building, and behavior change, all at once.
The product also lived in a delicate space: affordable enough to be accessible, premium enough to signal quality. Delivered through WhatsApp. Refilled by community. Competing against the entire chemical cleaning industry.
And the founder was building this alone — with a vision, orange peels, and the sheer conviction that it mattered.
The best brands are mirrors. We designed The B.E. Story to reflect Sumithra — warm, principled, quietly radical. Not a startup aesthetic. Not a wellness-industry cliché. Something that felt like it came from a real kitchen, a real person, a real conviction.
Over five label iterations across two years, we refined the visual language as the product range grew — from a single all-purpose cleaner to a full ecosystem spanning laundry, dishwash, floors, handwash, and menstrual care.
Each label carried the same soul: legible, honest, alive. And beneath each design was a system — for refilling, for ordering, for building a community of people who didn't want to leave a mess.
Name, logo, visual language, and brand voice — built to feel handmade, honest, and distinct from the saturated wellness market.
Five rounds of label evolution across multiple product lines as the brand grew. Each iteration more refined, more cohesive, more true.
Designed the logic and language for a WhatsApp-based ordering and refill system that turns customers into a community of changemakers.
Positioned B.E. as an affordable alternative to chemical products — making sustainability the economically sensible choice, not the premium one.
Cohesive packaging architecture across handwash, floor cleaner, laundry, dishwash, menstrual wash, and fruit/veggie wash.
The refill model isn't just practical — it's a designed loop. Every bottle returned is a vote for a different kind of economy.
A product born in a kitchen. A brand built in friendship. A community choosing differently, one refill at a time.
The B.E. Story is now a live, growing business in Dubai with a rewards programme, refill delivery, and a community of people who have chosen to clean their homes without leaving a mess. The brand's social presence, product range, and community system all carry the design DNA built across two years of friendship.
This is what Komorebi means by behavior change design. Not a campaign. Not a logo. A system that makes a better choice feel obvious, affordable, and human.
The B.E. Story is proof that transformation doesn't require a boardroom or a brief. Sometimes it starts with a recycling bin, a birthday, and two women who decided the world didn't have to work the way it always had.
