If you want repeat customers, stop chasing trends and start fixing your core product. DRUERA’s returning customer rate jumped from 5.64% to 32.92% over 20 years by sourcing from one family farm in Sri Lanka, grinding Alba-grade cinnamon the day it ships, testing every harvest for heavy metals, and publishing the lab results.
We get asked the same question from new customers, retailers, and the occasional skeptical journalist: is DRUERA a one-hit wonder? Fair question. The spice aisle is full of brands that show up, sell hard for a year or two, and quietly disappear when the next trend rolls in.
So we decided to stop talking and show the data instead. Here’s 20 years of our returning customer rate, end to end. Today it sits at 32.92%, meaning roughly one in three of our customers come back to buy from us again. Twenty years ago, that number was 5.64%. The line in between is not a marketing chart. It is a slow, stubborn climb built one harvest at a time.
What changed between 5.64% and 32.92%
Honestly, the cinnamon got better. Not all at once, and not because of any single decision. It got better because every monsoon taught us something we did not know the year before, and we kept changing the way we farmed and processed in response.
We have sourced from the same family farm in Sri Lanka since 2005. Same trees, same soil, same hands tending them. Over 20 years we have tightened the timing of harvests, improved how we dry the bark, gotten more careful about which quills make the cut for Alba grade, and rebuilt our grinding setup more times than we can count. None of it sounds dramatic on its own. Stack it across two decades and you get a product that tastes nothing like what we shipped in 2005.
The boring stuff that actually moves the needle
Three changes in particular show up in the retention numbers. First, we grind to order on the day your parcel ships. Most cinnamon you buy has been ground for months, sitting in a warehouse losing the oils that give Ceylon cinnamon its flavour. Ours has not. Second, we test every harvest, three to four times a year, for lead, arsenic, cadmium, and mercury, and we put the lab reports on the website. Recent results came back at 0.19 ppm lead. Customers notice when you show your work. Third, we ship straight from Sri Lanka to your door in 3 to 7 days. No US warehouse, no broker, no mystery middleman.
Why we are showing you the numbers
Most spice brands treat their retention data like a state secret. We are doing the opposite, because the only honest way to prove you are not a one-hit wonder is to show people the long curve. Including the dips. The peak above 55% in 2020. The settling back to around 40% recently. All of it.
You cannot fake a 20-year retention curve. You can fake a launch. You can ride a TikTok moment. You cannot fake two decades of customers ordering again, telling their friends, and writing reviews when their cinnamon arrives. That is what this chart is showing.
If you run a brand, take this and use it
We are not pretending we cracked some secret formula. The lesson from our data is almost embarrassingly simple. Pick the part of your product that customers actually taste, touch, or use, and obsess over it for ten years. Then keep going. Cut the warehouse middleman if you can. Test the things customers cannot see for themselves and publish the results. Stop hiding behind vague label words like “premium” or “organic” and put real numbers in front of people.
That is what got our retention rate from 5.64% to 32.92%. It is not a magic trick. It is just 20 years of refusing to ship something we are not proud of. If you taste our cinnamon, that is what you are tasting.
Mike de Livera, Founder, DRUERA
