Pristine Clean
Branch Basics founder Allison Evans on the dirty nature of the cleaning industry
health & sports
written by Antonia DePace
Your skin absorbs approximately 60 percent of what you put on it. This 60 percent includes ingredients from skincare, lotion and even cleaning products—making paying attention to the chemicals in what you’re using of the utmost importance. This is where Branch Basics comes in.
Founded by Nantucket summer resident Allison Evans, Kelly Love and Marilee Nelson, the e-commerce brand is an education and wellness company that prides itself on offering EWG-verified and Made Safecertified cleaning products, as well as resources that allow its consumer base to learn more. Currently, they sell an Oxygen Boosting powder, as well as an extremely versatile, 32-ounce liquid concentrate cleaning solution that can be used for anything from a multisurface cleaner and foaming hand soap to laundry detergent. “There’s nothing on the shelf that is as clean as ours because we are so strict when it comes to preservatives,” Evans says, noting that it took over 18 months and 100 iterations to solidify the cleaning concentrate. Recently, she also launched a 100 percent fragrance-free gel hand soap and has a laundry powder and 100 percent fragrance-free beeswax candle on the horizon.
Sold solely online, Branch Basics has become so popular through a continuously growing community of followers on Instagram, regular newsletters and podcasts, that last year, sales grew over 40 percent as a result of almost 240,000 customers purchasing products. The Oxygen Boost powder even has a cult-like following with about 60,000 refill subscribers. “We have a very strong and active community of people who follow us for health tips and how to create a clean home … and can’t help but love our products bc they trust us and our stuff works,” Evans says.
For Evans, the mission behind Branch Basics is a personal one. She was only in high school when she became a part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s statistic that six in 10 adults in the United States have a chronic illness. For her, it was a diagnosis of polycystic ovary syndrome, during which she was told that she would never be able to conceive naturally.
After hitting a breaking point in college where she struggled with symptoms like loss of motor skills and other neurological effects, she turned to Nelson for help. In addition to being Evans’ aunt, Nelson had also been a holistic health consultant for 30 years. Evans, along with Love (her then-college roommate), spent the entire summer at Nelson’s Texas Hill Country home completely focused on living free of toxins from everyday items like candles, dryer sheets, hairsprays, mainstream cleaning products, pesticides and more. By the end of the season, the thousands of cysts that had previously occupied Evans’ ovaries were nearly gone. “We just don’t know how much these products are affecting us until we remove them,” she explains. That summer set the course for the rest of Evans’ life, which she now lives completely toxin-free with her three (soon to be four) children.
In addition to the cleaning products on the Branch Basics website, the founders also launched a Toss the Toxins course where those who are
interested can learn more about the toxic burdens we surround ourselves with, including how to identify badfor- you ingredients. This is important because, according to Evans, a product can still be considered nontoxic even if it contains pesticides or preservatives. “We have the power of the purse, and we have to really be our own advocates,” she says.
She always suggests starting with a few simple rules, including tossing any product you have that doesn’t include an ingredients list. For those products with ingredients lists, the words “fragrance” or “parfum” are clear indicators of toxicity. According to Evans, there are up to 3,100 different chemicals that have been grandfathered under the two words, most of which have been tested positive for endocrine disruption.
It’s reasons like this that have spurred Evans and her partners to keep Branch Basics out of retail stores so they can fully control their mission and message. Evans concludes, “We would love to be a household name. We would love to be the resource when it comes to, is this clean? Should I use this product? Should I not? How can I vet my own products and not have to rely on someone else to tell me if this is clean or not? We want to teach people to fish. That is our ultimate goal.”
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