Pure & simple: Lisa and Michael Bronner's squeaky-clean business model

Ideas currently in vogue around ethical business and saving the planet have been at the core of Dr Bronner’s soap company since its foundation. Lisa and Michael Bronner tell Gillian Nelis how they’ve kept their business model squeaky-clean

Lisa and Michael Bronner: ‘We aren’t going to throw a product out there for the sake of a trend’. Fergal Phillips

Lisa Bronner was 19 when her grandfather Emanuel, the founder of what would go on to become a $100 million-plus family business, died. “Many, many questions have come to me about him in the years since,” says the 43-year-old Californian.

Delve even a little into his life story, and it’s not hard to see why. Born Emanuel Heilbronner in 1908, he had emigrated to the US in 1929 after falling out with his ...