By Matthew Kayser
For consumers walking through a grocery store or browsing a wellness marketplace today, “organic” is hardly an unfamiliar term. It appears on everything from produce and packaged foods to teas, spices and supplements. But before organic became a consumer expectation, it was a business conviction, and one that required companies to build relationships, establish standards and develop supply chains before much of today’s organic infrastructure existed.
Starwest Botanicals has had a front-row seat to that evolution for over 50 years. Founded as a small Sacramento herb shop in 1975, Starwest began advancing sustainable organic agriculture around 1980 and became a Certified Organic Processor in 1989. Today, it offers more than 1,500 products sourced from over 50 countries and is one of the nation’s largest suppliers of organic botanicals.
For CEO Brian Jansen, that history offers a useful perspective on what being an organic company means in 2026. “Twenty or thirty years ago, organic itself was the differentiator. Today, organic is the starting point, not the finish line. Certification used to carry most of the weight of trust. Now it’s one piece of a much larger expectation: transparency,” says Jansen.
The challenge is no longer simply convincing people that organic matters. It is maintaining the sourcing discipline, operational rigor and product knowledge required to deliver on expectations that have grown significantly more sophisticated.
That distinction matters because growth can make it harder to maintain the very qualities that drove a company’s success in the first place.
For a business like Starwest, growth means managing a global network of growers and suppliers while maintaining high standards of quality, consistency, safety, and traceability. The company sources botanicals from around the world, manages processing in-house and tests ingredients throughout receiving, milling, production and packaging.
“Growth exposes everything. When a company is small, extraordinary people can cover for imperfect systems. As you scale, that gets harder to pull off. You need strong processes, clear accountability, good data, operating discipline, but you also have to be careful not to systematize away the things that made the business special in the first place,” says Jansen.
Those details may sound more operational than visionary, but for Jansen, that is precisely the point.
Building an enduring business is less about chasing trends and more about creating systems that preserve quality as the company grows. That means empowering experienced teams, investing in infrastructure and knowing when innovation adds value and when change risks compromising customer trust.
“The goal isn’t to become a larger version of a different company. It’s to become a stronger, more capable version of what made Starwest work in the first place,” says Jansen. “Innovation without discipline turns into chaos. Discipline without curiosity turns into stagnation. We want both, using more than 50 years of knowledge, relationships and experience as an advantage.”
The Ingredients Behind the Label
That same thinking becomes important when considering the products themselves.
Most consumers recognize ingredients like turmeric, ginger, cinnamon, fennel or elderberry when they see them on a label. However, recognition is not the same as understanding.
A familiar name can make an ingredient seem like a commodity, but in reality, the quality and characteristics of a botanical can vary widely based on where and how it is grown, harvested, processed and handled throughout the supply chain.
“Cinnamon is a simple example. There are different species grown in different regions, with different flavor profiles, volatile and aromatic compounds, and culinary characteristics,” says Jansen. “Cinnamon grown in one region can have a meaningfully different pungency, aroma or fiber structure than cinnamon grown somewhere else. Even how an ingredient is dried or cut can change how it performs.”
That makes thoughtful sourcing more than just procurement, but a form of product stewardship.
For companies operating at scale, the challenge is making that complexity meaningful to customers. Consumers want transparency, but not a technical lecture with every purchase.
The opportunity, Jansen believes, is to make expertise approachable by helping people understand what they are buying, where it comes from, and why differences in quality matter.
That requires balancing education with accessibility and honoring traditional botanical knowledge with modern expectations for testing, documentation and consistency.
“Our job isn’t just to find an ingredient, it’s to understand what makes that ingredient perform the way our customer needs it to and then build a supply chain that delivers that consistently, batch after batch. That’s where sourcing expertise comes in,” says Jansen.
Building a Business That Can Last
Starwest’s longevity points to a broader leadership lesson. Companies that survive multiple generations of consumer trends rarely do so by remaining static. They evolve selectively, preserving what works while adapting where it matters.
That puts leaders of established businesses in a unique position. They inherit strengths worth protecting alongside processes that may need to change. Rather than simply disrupting what came before, they must decide what to modernize and what to protect.
For Jansen, leading Starwest means bridging those priorities by connecting innovation with operations.
“Starwest carries more than 50 years of knowledge, relationships and experience. The opportunity isn’t to leave that behind, it’s to use it as an unfair advantage. If we can combine that depth of botanical knowledge with a culture that stays curious, listens closely to customers, and is willing to test new ideas, I think you get something powerful: a company that respects where it came from without being constrained by it,” says Jansen.
That approach is particularly relevant as natural products move further into the mainstream. Growing demand creates opportunity, but it also puts greater pressure on sourcing networks, quality systems, employees and supplier relationships.
Sustainable growth is not simply about selling more. It is about building an organization capable of supporting more without compromising the standards behind its products.
That may be one of the clearest lessons from Starwest’s five decades in botanicals. Being early to a movement can create an advantage, but staying relevant as it becomes mainstream requires operational discipline, deep institutional expertise, trusted relationships and a willingness to keep adapting.
“Part of the job as a leader is creating enough discipline that people have the freedom to experiment inside it,” says Jansen.
For Jansen, leading Starwest in 2026 is about building on the brand’s years of experience while continuing to strengthen the people, systems and standards that will carry the business, and the organic botanical industry, forward into its next chapter.
Follow Brian Jansen on LinkedIn to keep up with his perspective on leadership, growth and what’s next for Starwest Botanicals.
