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.