https://www.gq.com/story/dr-bronners-corporate-success
"One sunny morning not too long ago, a dozen or so new hires arrive at the
headquarters of Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps in Vista, California. They’ve shown
up to a fairly standard-looking suburban office park to be initiated into their
standard-sounding roles in -liquid-soap production, shipping, and regional
sales. But the normalcy ends quickly on Planet Bronner. They park their cars in
a sea of solar-powered electric-vehicle chargers and then walk past a
company-tended garden, where fruits and vegetables are anyone’s for the taking.
Inside, they are greeted warmly—and perhaps thrown off guard a bit—by the Dr.
Bronner’s welcome wagon, a crew of impossibly upbeat humans who can best be
described as vibey. These cultural ambassadors, when they are not planning
their annual Burning Man pilgrimages, wear tie-dye mechanic coveralls and drive
around Dr. Bronner’s HQ blasting disco from a psychedelically outfitted fire
truck. They call themselves the Foamy Homies.
The new hires make their way to a conference room for their employee-onboarding
session, where they have been prompted by the Foamy Homies to introduce
themselves by showing off their preferred dance moves while a fog machine pumps
vaporous clouds into the room. By the time this fresh crop of Dr. Bronner’s
employees hears from the company’s CEO, David Bronner—who long ago revised the
abbreviation to stand for Cosmic Engagement Officer—they have realized that
this will not be a standard manufacturing gig at all.
“I’m on the All-One path,” announces David—who uses he/they pronouns—standing
before the group, referring to the sweeping ideology coined by their eccentric
grandfather, Emanuel Bronner. Emanuel, who possessed no advanced degree but was
undeterred in adopting a physician’s title, founded Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps
in the late 1940s, in large part because he wanted to broadcast his ideas about
unifying the human race, and his All-One dicta are still printed on the brand’s
soap-bottle labels. In the early years of the company, Dr. Bronner’s was a
genuine grassroots operation—a cult-favorite brand passed, if not directly from
the hands of Emanuel himself, among hippies camping out in vans at places like
Woodstock. Emanuel would distribute his product by promising a free bottle of
soap to anyone who would show up to listen to him proselytize the All-One
message.
Two generations later, Dr. Bronner’s has vastly outgrown its quirky, humble
origins and become the top-selling natural soap brand in North America. The
company now sells not only its liquid soap but highly successful lines of
balms, toothpastes, coconut oil, and hand sanitizers, in addition to newly
launched chocolates that were immediately hailed by gourmands as a premium
product. Today, the iconography of its labels—and Emanuel’s far-out
messaging—is imprinted firmly in the psyche of the American consumer. And yet,
even as so many Americans have come to possess a fondness for the soap, the raw
numbers around the success of Dr. Bronner’s—over $170 million in revenue in
2022—are still kind of staggering. Especially staggering, maybe, to the
customers who’ve been affectionately buying its signature minty formula since
the days of the natural-product boom of the ’60s and ’70s. Emanuel’s grandsons
David and Michael now preside over an empire in which a bottle of Dr. Bronner’s
soap is sold every two seconds or so."
Via Esther Schindler, who wrote "It’s worthwhile just for the quality of the
writing."
Share and enjoy,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
