TL;DR: We rebranded from Urban Plant Growers to Gathera in 2023 because the name was hard to remember, too narrow in its positioning, and no longer matched the brand we wanted to build.
People kept getting the name wrong
Customers were calling us ""Urban Plants"" or ""Urban Growers"", even our own parents got it wrong. A one-word name that people could not forget was the obvious fix.
The ""Urban"" positioning was too limiting
Urban Plant Growers was conceived around the idea of high-tech growing products for city dwellers. What we did not anticipate was that many of our most passionate customers were not urban at all. People in regional towns, on farms, in mining communities, and in extreme climates like Kalgoorlie and Coober Pedy were using our products precisely because they could not grow outdoors. Calling ourselves ""Urban"" was quietly excluding the people we most wanted to serve.
The aesthetic did not match where we were heading
The original Urban Plant Growers identity was clean, modern, and minimalist. That made sense for what we were building at the time. But over time we fell in love with something different: warm, chaotic, and alive. The kind of growing that gets dirt on your hands and fills your kitchen with the smell of basil. The Gathera brand gave us the visual language to express that.
Why Gathera?
We wanted a name that connected people to the idea of harvesting: of living in sync with a growing cycle, of taking something from your own little ecosystem every day. The word ""gatherer"" felt right. It is ancient, it is human, and it captures exactly what our customers do.
The move to funky greens and warm tones was a deliberate shift away from white and grey. We wanted Gathera to feel like it belonged in a living room, not a laboratory.
A note on the transition
Rebrands are harder than they look. We underestimated how much people had invested in the Urban Plant Growers name. Even a year after the rebrand, people were still coming to us and saying they had heard of a company called ""Urban Plant Growers."" It is always a pleasant surprise to explain what happened.