Sierra Mace, left, and her mother Summer Burchell run the re-branded Lumin Earth Apothecary, located at 875 Main St., in Downtown Morro Bay. Photo by Neil Farrell
For several years, daughter-mother team, Sierra Mace and Summer Burchell, have run a little plant and crystal shop in Morro Bay.
Gaia’s Garden started in April 2021 on Shasta Avenue selling houseplants and crystals to the more spiritually-minded folks.
But then their landlord and friend, Penny Harrington, who had the crystal shop, Ruby Dragon, died that December. They had to find a new home.
“We reopened in February 2022,” Sierra explained, in their current location in the Historic Circle Inn Building on Main Street in Downtown Morro Bay. “We were closed for a month.”
Since reopening, the two have refined and expanded their offerings, incorporating Sierra’s new skills as a certified herbalist, into lotions, tinctures and herbal tea blends.
Like many entrepreneurs, they’ve searched for winning combinations to make the business really go. It’s been a struggle but with Sierra’s graduation from herbalism school, they had yet another path they could follow.
“I work with medicinal plants,” Sierra explained. “I make herbal remedies, teas, tinctures, body oils, salves. It’s healing through plant medicines.
“I address the root of the problem through plant medicines.”
They added bulk sales of herbs and began to build a line of special blend teas. They added “apothecary” to the store name, rebranding as “Gaia’s Garden & Apothecary.”
She uses roots, berries, leaves and herbs, practicing medicine the way civilizations have done for thousands of years, before “modern medicine” and its reliance on chemicals took over.
Sierra said they also started a tearoom offering brewed teas and “mocktails,” for folks who like the taste of a cocktail, minus the alcohol.
The business was going OK and last January they decided to pre-package her mixtures and sell them online through a website.
Seeing some success there, they moved onto Yelp, where they saw an immediate success with orders picking up greatly to about 100 a day.
She built up her products to 30 different blends of teas and 16 tinctures, Sierra explained. They expanded the apothecary part and rebuilt their website, marketing it as Gaia’s Apothecary.
Things were looking up and a light started shining at the end of their self-employment tunnel. Then…
“We were getting a lot of online traction, on Yelp,” Sierra said, “and then ‘Ta-da!’ We got hit with a cease and desist order.”
It seems a huge multi-million dollar a year company called Gaia’s Herbs, Inc., out of North Carolina had taken notice.
What arrived like a punch in the gut was an 80-page CDO from a big law firm representing Gaia’s Herbs demanding they stop using the name “Gaia,” all together.
That might seem odd to readers, since Gaia is an ancient name from Greek Mythology for “Mother Nature,” or Earth Goddess, and trademarking it would be like owning the name “God.”
Faced with two choices — either fight it like David vs. Goliath, or change the name and re-brand everything again.
They sought counsel of a lawyer and he wanted a $5,700 retainer up front, which they didn’t really have. And how does one little plant, crystal and apothecary shop fight a $128 million a year conglomerate that has products in health food stores across the nation, including right here in Morro Bay?
The CDO was thorough. Sierra flips through the stack of papers and explains that they took screen shots of every product they were offering with “Gaia” in the name and claimed that each and every one was a trademark infringement and “we were doing them harm.”
Summer exclaimed with a laugh, “Doing them harm; we don’t even have employees!”
They stewed on it for a bit, and looked into the other Gaia’s. “I’d heard of them,” Sierra said. “They’re herbalists and farmers with a $128 million a year business. They’ve been around for a long time.”
She laughs at the claim that she, who hand blends her products and hand cuts all the labels, is “major competition” to them. “It’s not the products, it’s the name. I formulate everything myself.”
So after some soul searching, they decided to change the name. “We’re changing the name,” she said. “Rather than put money into attorney bills, we’ll put money into the re-branding.
“It’s the next step in the evolution of the business.”
So Gaia’s Apothecary is now “Flora Alchemy Herbals,” Sierra said. And the product website is being renamed “LuminEarthApothecary.com.”
“We dropped Gaia entirely from the business,” Sierra said. They still offer houseplants, crystals, readings, teas and the herbal medicine products. And this time, they checked to be sure there isn’t some other monstrous corporation out there whose toes might get stepped on because of a name. They both laugh and say this time they intend to file their own trademark, just to be on the safe side.
Lumin Earth Apothecary is located at 875 Main St., Suite C. They are open Mondays 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.; close Tuesdays; Wednesdays-Fridays 10-5; Saturdays 10-6; and Sundays 11-4.
They’re on Facebook at Lumin Earth Apothecary and on Instagram too.
Both mother and daughter are keeping a positive attitude about all this, and are grateful for all the local folks that have dropped by to offer support.
