In the beginning

From the smallest seed to the largest living thing, what was made carries an order. A seed knows how to become a tree. Nobody taught it, nobody designed it, and in six thousand years of trying, nobody has improved on it.

Prima materia. The first matter. It is an old name — older than the chemists who later borrowed it — for what existed at the start: matter before it was given form. Unmixed. Complete in itself. Waiting for nothing.

That is where this company got its name, and it is the whole of what we believe.

What was made was made whole. Not a draft. Not a raw input for an industry to finish. Everything we will ever put in a jar existed before this company, before any of us, and before anyone had a way to measure it. We did not invent it. We cannot improve it. We can only fail to spoil it.

That is the company.

So we work the other way

Most of this market sells a substance that has been taken apart. Find the fraction that measures well, sell that fraction, discard the rest, and print a promise on the front. It is efficient, it looks impressive on a label, and something is always lost in it — usually the part nobody has thought to measure yet. What is left is a business built on selling a man hope in a jar and never letting him check what is in it. We will not make money that way, and we do not believe anyone should.

So we work the other way. We take the substance in the form it arrived in, we leave it whole, and that leaves exactly one question worth asking: is there anything in here that should not be.

Before a jar exists

Finding material we would put our name on took a month. Not because it is hard to find — it is everywhere — but because almost nobody selling it can show you a test report, and the ones who can often do not want to. We asked every one of them the same two questions: what is in it, and who measured it. Most of that month was spent on people who could not answer.

Then part of every batch goes to a laboratory and never comes back. Not a pinch in a bag — enough that losing it hurts. It is weighed out, paid for, and sold to nobody.

Two weeks later the numbers come back.

Only then does anyone fill a jar. By hand, one at a time.

That is why the jar is not cheap, and it is the last part of the price we would ever cut.

We do not know more than you do

That is the honest position. We are not standing here with knowledge you do not have. We went and checked, and we published everything that came back.

What we will not do

It is a narrower business, and it means saying less than other people say. We will not put a promise on the label and we will not tell you how to feel. We will tell you precisely what is in the jar, and let a man decide for himself.

That is not a marketing position. We think it is owed to him.

And it is the line we care about most: we will not make money from something a man cannot check. Everything else on this website exists to make that sentence true.

So we publish all of it

Every batch goes to a laboratory we do not own, and every number that comes back is published — including the ones no law requires us to publish. You scan the code on your jar, you find your own batch, and you read it yourself. No badge. No seal we designed in-house. No asking you to take our word.

When a number comes back bad, that will be published too. We would rather lose a batch than keep a secret.

Why we go that far

We are not the only ones eating it.

The same jars are in our own homes. There are three of us, we fill them by hand, and some of them go to people we love. That is a different kind of responsibility than selling something.

So we send every batch to a laboratory. Not to have a certificate for the website — to be certain instead of hopeful. We would rather pay for the answer than hope for it.

There are three of us. One fills and seals every jar by hand. One packs every order. One takes the photographs on this website. There is no factory, and nothing here is automated.

The standard does not loosen as we grow

One ingredient. Whole. Proven in public. There will be more of them — and each one arrives the same way: on its own, with its own certificate, on its own page. Or it does not arrive.

Prima materia. The first matter, finished properly.

— German
Firstmatter, Estonia