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Comment by bcx | Hacker News Reader

I want to hear the story about how they went from 4M in sales in 1998 to 170M in 2021. It might help more entrepreneurs choose to follow a similar direction in building long lasting, opinionated, mission driven companies, and pushing through hard times, rather than taking the quick life changing payouts to see their businesses disappear as they become folded into bigger entities.

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The founder and titular Bronner, who was somewhat mentally ill, died in 1997 and his children respected but toned down his legacy (old bottles were just covered with nonsense writing) and paid more attention to business sense. Likewise at the same time hippy counterculture became more mainstream, watered down, something you sell in the grocery store. i.e. whole foods being owned by Amazon.

It’s basically a story of a product which appealed to a small counterculture riding the wave of that becoming mainstream with a commodity product which got to keep the weird in a way which didn’t offend the sensibilities of the median culture.

In other words they very gently sold out without sacrificing much.

King Arthur Flour is another company that had been around forever but seemed to become much better known around the same time. I suspect that it may partly relate to the web going mainstream--and therefore niche companies with a "fan club" but not enough money to do widespread promotion and advertising had new options for reaching people.

Mentioning the web, they were quite early to have web presence, and the archive is delightful.

https://web.archive.org/web/19970131094107/http://kingarthur...

To be fair, it's the only pure soap you can buy, for some weird reason.

I don't see how they sold out. The recipe is the same, none of the products have antibacterial chemicals like triclosan in them. The founding Bronner's ideology on pests was "Displace, don't erase." So unless they somehow violated that, I don't see any selling out. Plus the bottled of soap still have words on them -- ABC 123, one people..etc.

> old bottles were just covered with nonsense writing

The bottles I buy still are

It used to be even crazier.

The label used to have instructions on using the soap and lemon juice to prevent pregnancy, amongst other wild stuff. I wish my old bottles had more than scraps of the labels.

Its no secret why they got so big. The soap is AMAZING. I keep a bottle at all times. Its the only soap that feels good to use. Not just my opinion either. I've had guests spontaneously ask me where I got it after trying it for the first time.

As for what makes it so good? I think its a combination of it being REAL soap and not some alternative amalgam of desurfecants and that they don't remove the glycerine. Sure, it makes it so you can't use it in handpumps (gums them up) but its also why their soap manages to clean so well without drying your hands out.

Lastly, the use of essential oils for the scents just makes it a luxurious experience.

All they had to do was get it in front of more people. anyone who tries it gets hooked.

The organic sugar soap does come in pump bottles and is also amazing.

Word of mouth is how I ended up using the product and now I’m hooked. It’s quality soap and you can use it for anything. So I think the story there is: quality will eventually win? But yeah I too would like to hear more if there’s more to the story than that.

I’ve used their soap for a while. The messages are one thing but they make a fantastic product. It has the highest EWG rating, is made of all natural ingredients and has never had phthalates, parabens etc. To top it all off it’s a good product that’s sudsy and actually gets you clean.

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