# Leena Organica — six brand directions for team review

Six distinct identities for the team to look at side by side. All six are organic produce trade, EG ↔ NL. They differ in **business role**, **promise to the buyer**, **visual register** and **language register**.

The brand axis is **quality, trust, integrity** — the goal is a positioning that's defensible against being lumped in with commodity flippers. Each direction makes that case in a different way.

| # | Folder | Identity | Business role | Promise to buyer | Visual register | Reference brands |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| **A** | `the-house/` | **The House** | Specialty importer, long-term forward contracts with named growers. Owns the shipment field to DC. | "Every box has a name on it — ours." | Heritage merchant. Single restrained serif or grotesque. Warm paper. Documentary photos of farms, crates, people. Long-form prose. No data-density. | Maison Plisson · Castillo de Canena · Aesop About |
| **B** | `trade-desk/` | **The Trade Desk** | Trader / importer of record. Built for procurement officers. | "Here is the catalogue, the calendar, the cert, the lane. Make the call." | Industrial B2B software. IBM Plex Sans + Plex Mono. Tabular data. Sage palette. (Current v2.) | Greenyard · Stripe docs |
| **C** | `grower-back/` | **The Grower-Back Partnership** | Direct partnership — Leena co-invests with growers (cert cost, infrastructure), takes a known margin, names every farm. | "We pay the farmer first. The audit trail proves it." | Producer-led editorial. Photography of named growers and place. Place names as titles. Maps. Journalistic publication feel. | Equal Exchange · Patagonia Provisions · Counter Culture Coffee origins |
| **D** | `the-verifier/` | **The Verifier** | Importer whose product *is* the audit trail. Every shipment publishes its traceability file publicly. | "Open the file before you order. We have nothing to hide." | Documentary / dashboard. Lot ID as a first-class citizen. Public ledger feel. Restrained colour. Could show real shipment receipts as the homepage hero. | Provenance.org · Open Food Facts |
| **E** | `the-curator/` | **The Curator** | Specialty wholesale curator. A tight catalogue of things we have an opinion on. | "We chose forty SKUs. Here's why." | Editorial / opinionated. Strong art direction. Fewer products, more story per product. Guidebook feel. | Mariage Frères · Ortiz · Belazu |
| **F** | `the-almanac/` | **The Almanac** | Specialty trader whose brand is the year. Dispatches by week and season. Catalogue is time, not categories. | "What's good this week, where it came from, when it ships." | Almanac / publication. Source Serif 4 + Hanken Grotesk. Parchment with ochre & harvest-red. Calendar grids as recurring motif. | Field & Flower · ChezPanisse.com · Old Farmer's Almanac |

## How to compare

Open the showcase index in a browser:

> http://localhost:4747/

Each card opens its own multi-page site. Pages mirror each other so the comparison is fair:

- `/` — home
- `/products` — catalogue
- `/sourcing` — how we source
- `/lanes` — trade lanes
- `/about` — who we are
- `/contact` — talk to us

## Status

All six directions built. Each is a complete six-page site with its own visual identity, voice and structural decisions.

- ✅ **A The House** — heritage merchant. PT Serif on warm paper, deep wine accent, LO monogram, signed founder letters, drop caps. `the-house/`
- ✅ **B The Trade Desk** — industrial B2B. IBM Plex Sans + Plex Mono, sage palette, tabular data, harvest calendar. `trade-desk/`
- ✅ **C Grower-Back** — editorial publication. Newsreader + Inter, clay/sage palette, named growers, transparent euro-split. `grower-back/`
- ✅ **D The Verifier** — public ledger. Inter Tight + JetBrains Mono, signal blue, lot IDs as first-class citizens, every claim document-referenced. `the-verifier/`
- ✅ **E The Curator** — editorial catalogue. Spectral + Inter Tight, oxblood accent, 40 numbered lots, opinionated tasting notes. `the-curator/`
- ✅ **F The Almanac** — calendar-led publication. Source Serif 4 + Hanken Grotesk, parchment palette with ochre & harvest-red, month-strip motif, weekly dispatch voice. `the-almanac/`

Archived: `_v1-ai-template/` — the original Fraunces+Manrope draft, rejected as "screams AI-generated". Kept for reference.

## What to take to the team

After all five are built, the recommended discussion structure is:

1. Look at the homepage of each (5 minutes per direction).
2. Pick the two that feel most like Leena to the team.
3. Open Products and About on those two — see if the language still feels right at depth.
4. Pick one to take forward as v6.
5. v6 is then built as an Astro project, deployed to Netlify, EN/NL/AR localised.

Don't choose by adjective. Choose by which one you'd hand to a Dutch retail buyer with confidence.