Created in California: How Dr. Bronner’s became the soap for every subculture

VISTA, Calif. — Officially, there are 18 ways to use Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps: The same amber liquid you rub on your body doubles as a toothpaste, a fruit and vegetable rinse, a decongestant, a laundry and dishwashing detergent, a shaving cream substitute, a floor-mopping solution, a shampoo for you or your dog, and a toilet bowl cleaner.

In the company’s earlier days, its eccentric founder crammed even more suggested applications onto the text-heavy, world peace-espousing labels that have become a hallmark of the cult brand. The multitasking soap, Emanuel Bronner promised, could kill fleas and ticks — until the Environmental Protection Agency made him change the language (he amended it to “cleans fleas and ticks”; today’s updated version says “ant spray!”).

There was also Dr. Bronner’s — he wasn’t actually a doctor — assertion that the product, made primarily of water and plant oils, could prevent pregnancy.

“I think my grandfather was going off of, if you change the pH of the environment, a fertilized egg would be unviable — so if you wash with the soap after intercourse, then it would functionally act as birth control,” said Lisa Bronner. “That wasn’t the road that we wanted to go down.” (The family-owned company backed away from the claim after its founder died in 1997.)

Perhaps inspired by that experimental ethos, customers have discovered their own unusual uses in the years since Emanuel started mixing gallons of peppermint castile soap out of his Pershing Square tenement apartment in 1948.

The result was so good that what had begun as a way for the third-generation soap maker to propagate his spiritual message — by printing it onto the labels of the bottles in dense blocks of tiny script — became the top-selling natural soap brand in the country, with deep footholds among hippies, campers, backpackers, vegans, hikers, moms, gardeners and other niche groups.

“It’s the official soap of the American ferret owners association,” grandson Mike Bronner said at a recent natural products trade show in Anaheim, a wall plastered with 10-foot-tall images of candy-colored Dr. Bronner’s bottles looming over him. “I didn’t even know people owned ferrets.”

“Whatever your subculture is,” added older brother David Bronner, “we’re your soap.”

From the company’s booth nearby, cheerful Dr. Bronner’s employees were doling out samples, rainbow bumper stickers and the brand’s newest organic vegan chocolate bar flavor — cool peppermint cream, a nod to its original soap scent. Also up for grabs: copies of Emanuel Bronner’s 70-page screed, titled “The Moral ABC,” and vinyl records of him reciting it.

Like the soap labels, the wrappers on Dr. Bronner’s Magic All-One Chocolate are crowded with exclamation-point-studded passages from “The Moral ABC,” which details in rambling, often incoherent prose Emanuel’s belief that all beings are interconnected and must join together regardless of religious or ethnic divides. “All-one or none!” he liked to shout in what would become the company’s motto. (It does not, as many have assumed, refer to the soap’s reputed all-purpose properties.)

David, Mike and Lisa Bronner grew up in Glendale, not giving much thought to the prospect of one day taking over the family business and generally regarding their grandfather as a bewildering figure.

“My granddad was always talking about uniting ‘Spaceship Earth,’ and it was kind of sailing over our heads,” David said.

“He’d be talking to us as if we were all PhD students in religious studies,” Mike said of visits to Emanuel’s home when the siblings were in elementary school. “He was blind, and every once in a while he would say, ‘Are you there?’ and we’d be like, “All-one, Grandpa!’ And he’d be like, ‘Very good. OK, I want you to recite the peppermint bottle.’”

Today, David and Mike run Dr. Bronner’s as equal partners, carrying on the brotherly love philosophy of their late grandfather while growing the 75-year-old company to $170.3 million in annual revenue last year. Revenue totaled $4 million in 1998, the year their father, Jim Bronner, died; a decade before, he had saved the flailing company from bankruptcy.

Dr. Bronner’s soap, initially rooted in counterculture and relegated to the shelves of health food stores, is now sold at major U.S. retailers and in 40 countries, with a bottle or bar sold every 0.95 of a second. At $16.99 for a one-quart bottle, it’s prized for being intensely fragrant, eco-friendly, biodegradable, fair-trade, gentle on the skin and cost-effective due to its super-concentrated formulation (“Dilute! Dilute! OK!” the labels urge).

Sandra Bullock once shared her window-washing method using Dr. Bronner’s almond-scented soap. Kristen Bell said the tingly peppermint “is nice for a foot soak at the end of the day.” Drew Barrymore called it “the miracle natural product,” and Lady Gaga was photographed in a bathtub with a green bottle of Dr. Bronner’s visible on the ledge. (None is a paid spokesperson.)

“More and more mainstream folks are grooving on us,” said David, 50, a Harvard graduate with a degree in biology.