The founder

Tamarin Howse founded Better Tea Co. after years in the fast-paced corporate world, where stress and anxiety took a toll on her mental health. Tea became her coping tool, then a quiet way of starting honest conversations with colleagues about wellbeing. That gave her an idea: design a tea range that opens those conversations and helps people feel better at the same time.

Better Tea is the result. A range of teas for the highs and lows of everyday life, ethically sourced, packed in recyclable materials. Beyond the product, the brand runs mental health awareness campaigns, workshops, and fundraisers, and donates 5% of profit to local mental health organisations.

All of which is why Better Tea's visual brand has so much to carry. The whole brand is about slowing down, being present, choosing small acts of self-care. Every image needs to feel like that.

The challenge

When a single shoot costs $850, you spend it carefully. You save it for new products. You don't burn it on a Tuesday social post or an email banner. So most of the year, the visual brand stretches a small library further than it should.

That's the part that quietly hurts. Months where the brand never looks as fresh as it actually is. Trying a new look, a new bundle shot, a new feeling for a product: none of that is realistic when each image asks for hundreds of dollars and a coordinated day.

Tamarin wanted room to play. Room to try things. Room to build a brand that looked the way she meant it to look.

I feel like it can read my mind. I'll vaguely describe something, and it creates something better than I could have imagined.

Tamarin Howse, Founder Better Tea Co

The turning point

Tamarin needed a launch image for a new product bundle. She was in a different city, with no way to shoot the products herself. So she asked her team back home to grab their phones and snap the products on a desk. She uploaded those to Kive.

Seconds later, a finished image came back. Polished, brand-appropriate, ready to publish. She was instantly hooked.

That was just the start. Since then, Tamarin has used Kive for products still in development, for testing new packaging concepts before committing to samples, and for the everyday brand photography that used to be impossible to fund.

On freedom

Ask Tamarin what changed and she answers in a single word: freedom.

A brand image used to need a date on the calendar, a photographer on call, and $850 in the budget. Now it just needs an idea. From a desk, from a hotel, from a Sunday afternoon. The shoot was the bottleneck. Kive removed it.

"I have created dozens of images that tell my brand story in a way I could never have afforded before."

How she uses it

Building a brand, at her own pace.

• Any starting point works
  • A phone snap of products on a desk. A rough reference. A quick studio shot. Tamarin uploads what she has, and Kive turns it into a finished brand image. That's how it started, and it's still how she works.
• See it before you build it
  • Before committing to samples, suppliers, or a packaging direction, Tamarin uses Kive to picture the idea in the world. Concept first, sample second. That changes the order of decisions, and the cost of being wrong.
• Show products that aren't shipping yet
  • Tamarin has created campaign imagery for products still in development, before they were physically ready to photograph. Customer feedback, anticipation, and momentum, all built around something that hasn't even shipped.
• A brand library, one image at a time
  • Image by image, Tamarin has built the kind of cohesive brand photography that used to call for a big agency and a bigger budget. The visuals carry the same feeling as the tea: slow, warm, intentional. Built in pockets of time, on her own schedule.