![]() ![]() In the 15 years since he took over, annual sales have grown 1,300 percent, from $5 million to $64 million. “If we are not maxed out and pushing our organization to the limit, then what are we doing?” Bronner asks.Įmbracing lefty lifestyle politics might not seem like the best way to grow a business-until you sit on the orange velour couch in Bronner’s Tibetan-flag-draped office in Escondido and watch the phone light up with calls from buyout firms. ![]() Activism and charitable donations consume about half of the company’s healthy profits. (“Absolute cleanliness is Godliness! Teach the Moral ABC that unites all mankind free, instantly 6 billion strong we’re All-One.”) Since its founding in 1948 by Bronner’s grandfather, the Southern California company has become a soapbox for a variety of causes-from its founder’s religious universalism to its recent campaigns to legalize hemp and marijuana, clean up fair trade and organic standards, and combat income inequality. ![]() The GMO battle is just the latest in a line of feisty political campaigns waged by the lovably weird cleaning products dynasty, best known for its tingly peppermint liquid soap with the earnestly logorrheic label. “If we don’t win the right to label and enable people to choose non-GMO,” Bronner told me, “then everything is going to be GMO.” Bronner’s alone donated $2.2 million to the Yes on 522 campaign-after sinking $620,000 into a similar California ballot measure in 2012. ![]() The initiative, which voters ultimately rejected, was among the costliest in state history: Its backers raised $8 million while its foes in biotech and Big Food poured nearly three times as much into its defeat. An amulet dangled on a hemp necklace over his tie-dyed shirt as he leaned in toward his computer screen, staring at what really mattered to him: the latest internal poll for Washington Initiative 522, a ballot measure to require the labeling of foods containing genetically modified organisms that was coming up for a vote the following month. Bronner’s global HQ and found the CEO at his flimsy Ikea-style desk, ignoring business calls. It’s been just 21 hours since I showed up at the hive of cheap warehouses that serves as Dr. Out past the breakers, Bronner starts egging me on as a huge wave approaches: “Go Josh! Go!” I flail desperately, wheezing my way into position atop a glassy wall cresting with foam.īronner says he has twice refused offers from Walmart to carry his soaps because he can’t stomach the chain’s politics. “You’ve got to come to our board meeting tomorrow morning,” Bronner told me at some point between the vegan tapas and my fifth Amstel Light.īut the Advil still hasn’t kicked in as we load his extra longboard (“the Shredder”) into his pickup and roll down the hill to Carlsbad’s Terramar Beach, where we meet a crew of Bronner employees and Bronner brahs-including Mike Hynson, the son of the pro surfer featured in the 1966 cult classic The Endless Summer. Shivering out from under the Mexican blanket in his guest bedroom, I dimly recall the two of us dancing in his backyard and expounding upon the hugeness of the universe. Bronner’s Magic Soaps-who looks like a raver version of Captain Jack Sparrow-kept me up past midnight drinking beers, smoking spliffs, and listening to Deltron 3030 and Gorillaz as he regaled me with stories about LSD trips in Burning Man’s Sanctuary tent and his early days as a squatter and club kid in Amsterdam. and my head is splitting from the roar of David Bronner’s Vitamix blender pulverizing frozen berries and hemp milk. CEO David Bronner shows off his company’s suds-spewing fire truck. ![]()
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