From Setback to Success: How One Ingredient Fueled a $50 Million Comeback

From left, cofounders Allison Evans, Marilee Nelson, and Kelly Love

Branch Basics

In 2016, Allison Evans was pregnant, sitting in a duplex in Austin with her cofounders, processing customer refunds through the night. They’d just laid off all nine employees at their company, Branch Basics. Angry customers were threatening lawsuits. Investors wanted their money back. The IRS had launched an audit.

Evans, her best friend Kelly Love, and her aunt Marilee Nelson had made an unprecedented decision: shut down the $2 million business after being unable to verify an ingredient in their cleaning product. The brand was founded on promoting nontoxic ingredients, purity and transparency—they couldn’t reconcile selling a product that they couldn’t fully explain.

“I swear I thought I was going to go to jail,” Evans recalls on the Failure Factor podcast. “There were three names forever scalded into my brain. One was an attorney—their threats felt so big. I would lose my breath when they commented [on social media].”

Today, Branch Basics generates $50 million in annual revenue, serves over 240,000 households, and sits on shelves in 600+ Target stores. Their comeback story highlights perhaps the most important “ingredient” for long-term business success: integrity.

The Health Crisis That Inspired It All

The Branch Basics origin story started more than two decades earlier, when Evans was sixteen. Diagnosed with a severe case of polycystic ovarian syndrome, she was told she would never conceive naturally.

In college at UT Austin, her health worsened. Evans developed mysterious, debilitating pain and began losing motor skills. Doctors couldn’t agree on a diagnosis, and nothing—hydrocodone, antidepressants, steroid injections—was working.

Then Nelson introduced a concept that would become foundational to Branch Basics’ philosophy: the body burden. Years earlier, Nelson’s son had been exposed to a now-banned pesticide at school that left him neurologically damaged. Doctors said he’d never recover—but after removing synthetic fragrances and cleaning products from her home, he improved significantly.

The summer of 2008, Evans and Love moved to the Texas Hill Country to live with Nelson. They ate real food, turned off their phones, and eliminated synthetic fragrances. Within weeks, Evans was able to drop her medications. Love’s debilitating menstrual cramps vanished.

Understanding the impact of their lifestyle changes firsthand, the duo were compelled to build a platform to spread knowledge. Evans recalls wanting “a megaphone and a mountain” to get Nelson’s message out. So they started a blog focused on eliminating environmental toxins and featuring safe products.

The Ingredient They Couldn’t Explain

The blog eventually featured cleaning products, and the women found a formula Nelson had used for years—one of the only products her chemically sensitive son had ever tolerated. They saw an opportunity to white-label it as Branch Basics.

The business grew. They joined an incubator at UVA, raised friends-and-family money, and hired nine employees. Capitalizing on the early mommy-blogger wave during the prime Facebook era, they built momentum and loyalty. By 2015, they were doing $2 million in revenue.

But savvy customers started asking questions about the last ingredient on the label: a vague “plant and mineral-based enzymes.” Evans and her cofounders questioned their formulator repeatedly, but the answers were vague.

“More people started calling us out publicly,” recounts Evans. “These bloggers are trusting us and they’re affiliates now. And so then their followers are holding them accountable.” Branch Basics existed to motivate customers to closely read ingredient lists, yet they couldn’t explain their own.

The Fallout

Unable to see a path forward, the women made the difficult decision to admit they couldn’t verify the ingredient—and shut down. What followed was what Evans describes as one of the darkest periods of her life.

They processed refunds until they ran out of money. Called investors—many of them parents’ friends—to say they couldn’t return their money. Dealt with customers accusing them of harming children since they’d marketed the product as baby-safe.

When they thought things couldn’t get worse, they were audited by the IRS—and the accountant they relied on disappeared (allegedly to start a marijuana farm in Oregon). Both Evans and Love were pregnant, while drowning in shame and anxiety. Their dream to make homes safer and healthier seemed over.

But even at her lowest, Evans couldn’t imagine doing anything else. “The only thing I want to do is talk to people about removing toxins and helping them heal. What company can I find? I can’t find anyone doing what we’re doing, and that’s literally what kept me going,” she says. That conviction motivated them to try again.

Chasing the Impossible

For eighteen months, they worked to chase the “impossible:” a formula with none of the chemicals or preservatives found in every other “nontoxic” product on the market.

It took over 100 iterations. Evans tested formulas at home on ketchup, mustard, wine stains. She sent samples to chemically-sensitive friends. Most failed. Then one day, a formula arrived that worked—and didn’t cause reactions or skin irritation.

“I called Marilee and was like, ‘Have you tried it?’ She’s like, ‘I’ve tried it.’ I’m like, ‘Are you loving it?’ She’s like, ‘I’m obsessed.’ I’m like, ‘Me too.’”

The Comeback

In fall 2017, with six- and nine-month-old babies, they relaunched a preorder with their new CEO and CFO (who’d come on as equal partners in exchange for manufacturing rights). They made $80,000.

“We could not believe it,” Evans says.

The customers who really knew what the women stood for returned.

When I asked about rebuilding customer trust, Evans pointed to their integrity. “If you spend an hour with the three of us, or each of us individually, and you have any ability to discern character, you’re going to know that it was not intentional.”

Within a year, they raised $1 million.

The Heart of Their Resilience

Today, Evans is clear about what kept them going:

“Our ‘Why’ is literally the only reason we survived our failure. All three of us were being just shot forward by this mission of helping people heal,” she says. “I personally don’t think that economic gain could have taken me through this.”

Her advice to her 2016 self, and to any founder facing their version of failure? “Chill the heck out. You know who you are. The cream rises to the top.”

Branch Basics is now in what Evans calls “the glory days”—a comeback made possible by telling the truth, even when it would have been easier not to.

Listen to my full conversation with Allison Evans on The Failure Factor podcast, available on Apple and Spotify.

Megan Bruneau, M.A. Psych is a therapist, executive coach, and the founder of Off The Field Executive & Personal Coaching. She hosts The Failure Factor podcast featuring conversations with entrepreneurs about the setbacks that led to their success.