Selling Feeling Over Features: How Coyuchi Converts AI Search Traffic into Premium Buyers

**Vicki** (0:00)
The initial UGC got amazing click-through rates, but then someone got to the website and it was pure sticker shock.

**Adam Levinter** (0:09)
What started as a boutique for sustainable home goods has exploded into Coyuchi, a multi-million dollar organic home and lifestyle empire defined by premium bedding and closed loop circular design.

**Vicki** (0:21)
Acquisition via LLMs is our literal fastest growing channel of customer acquisition.

**Adam Levinter** (0:27)
Today, Coyuchi's president breaks down exactly how she transitioned a heritage 90s brand into a digital powerhouse using new channels and the future of agentic strategies. Vicki, welcome.

**Vicki** (0:38)
Thanks so much, Adam. Thanks for having me.

**Adam Levinter** (0:40)
This brand's been around quite a while.

**Vicki** (0:42)
Yes.

**Adam Levinter** (0:43)
It feels very modern and new age, but the history goes back to 1991 So how did this get started?

**Vicki** (0:51)
Coyuchi was founded in 1991, basically on this premise of having organic textiles. And it was before the word organic was mainstream in any way, and it was before there was even any certifications for what organic really means. So our founder was down in Mexico. She was a weaver herself and enjoyed going down to Mexico and seeing other women weave. It's where she found a special strain of cotton that is more brown in color than what we think of as traditional sort of white cotton. And they had an Aztec name for that type of cotton, it was called Coyuchi cotton or the translation is Coyote cotton apparently.
So that was her sort of inspiration to start this brand. But it really started from a place of loving weaving and wanting to use organic fibers for two reasons. One, because it felt like the most natural way of weaving. It's what she was observing down in Mexico.
But two, her passion back then was really around the earth and saving the earth and water savings in particular. And so by definition, organic farming, whether it's your food or your textiles, you're not putting any chemicals or pesticides into the crop, nor are you putting it anywhere into any of the product, which means you don't then need water to wash it all off. So she started from a passion place of water, but that has obviously grown and everyone has started to realize the actual health benefits beyond helping the earth, just the health benefits of using organic materials, eating organic foods, and it's something that Coyuchi's been doing for 35 years.

**Adam Levinter** (2:27)
Yeah. And I would say that this idea of having organic bedding, sustainable bedding, I mean, it's relatively in vogue now, but we're sitting here in 2026
Back in the 90s, it would have been hard to generate the kind of traction that you would need as a business. So what was the first 10 years like?

**Vicki** (2:47)
She had a store in a little town outside of San Francisco called Point Ray Station, where she sold these goods that were crafted around the world. But really that first customer was someone that they themselves were obsessed and researching organic. The key though was that the products were super high quality and they would wear beautifully because they were natural. So instead of having something that had a chemical dye or a chemical finish that made it seem soft, that then washed off after five washes, this was a product with staying power. And so it just started to get really local traction. And then for the first, not only 10, but 20 years of the company essentially was a wholesale business. So Coyuchi was in boutiques all around San Francisco and then started to go more nationwide, landing eventually in places like ABC Home and Carpet in New York City. And then it started to be carried by some of the luxury retailers. So Bloomingdale's and Saks, et cetera. And so it was a very no-pun intended organic growth via that one storm point raise station and wholesale accounts for its first 20 years of life.

**Adam Levinter** (4:02)
Talk to me a little bit about the link between got certification and Coyuchi and what it actually means to be got certified.

**Vicki** (4:10)
Good question. So people throw around the word organic quite a bit. And there are different forms of organic. There's also things that we might hear in the market like Okatex as something that shows that something is safe. So when something is certified organic, which again, this came years after Coyuchi actually existed, it truly means that there is no harsh chemicals and no pesticides anywhere throughout the process.
And it's something that is difficult to do actually, but it differs from something like Okatex that says, ok, you have your fibers, you made your product, we are going to test it at the end and make sure that it doesn't have anything harmful in it. But it doesn't mean that those chemicals and chemical processing weren't used all along the way, that the pesticides weren't used in the farms, that is not helping with biodiversity. So when something is got certified organic, which all of Coyuchi's products are, it means there's no pesticides from the fields all the way through the entire production process. There's no harsh chemicals entering that process. And so in the end, you have an actual certifiable organic product.