Branch Basics’ Co-Founder Says “Sometimes, Your Biggest Challenge Is Your Greatest Opportunity”

Growing up, Marilee Nelson intended to be a doctor. She certainly never expected to be selling cleaning products of any kind. “And I really don't even think of it like that,” she says. “I just feel like our products are a platform for our mission. But, I had two unexpected catastrophic instances in my life that had no good medical resolution, no good hope, or prognosis.” 

“I was pre-med,” Nelson says. “I had grown up, been very sickly as a child, with earaches, asthma, allergies, horrible hormone disruption, fevers of unknown origin. My parents took me from doctor to doctor trying to figure out what was wrong. My mother was diagnosed with cancer at 12. I decided I wanted to be a doctor.”

After 28 years of such nonstop, crippling health challenges, which her son would later inherit, Marilee Nelson launched a “positive rebellion to save [her] son.” She eschewed the Standard American Diet (SAD), and began to treat “food as medicine.” In so doing, she found immediate improvements, even avoiding an ostensibly “necessary” kidney transplant. She’d also been told in no uncertain terms that she could never get pregnant, but that’s another article …”

Nelson extensively studied the food-as-medicine movement, and even became a medicinal cook, running a health resort in Montego Bay, Jamaica. Then back in the US, in Texas, she learned the hard way the harms of pesticides on the immune system. Her son, Douglas, became EXTREMELY sensitive to all manner of toxins in the environment: chemicals, pesticides, mold, volatile organic compounds, electromagnetic effects, etc. It seemed that everything was a potential threat to his health.

Douglas was practically a “bubble boy,” according to his doctors. They called him “catastrophically chemically injured, with irreversible brain and immune system damage.” Says Nelson, “I realized that Douglas was a laboratory for observation on how the body and mind react to chemical exposures/triggers as well as how they respond to a removal of those triggers.”

The Nelson family practiced an extreme detox regimen as the best way – the only way – to essentially “cure” Douglas of his many interrelated immune illnesses.

A key moment came when, through her studies, Nelson eventually discovered Bau-biologie, “Building Biology,” the science of how buildings [i.e., variously “green” versus conventional] affect occupants’ health, with an emphasis on bedroom hygiene. In Bau biology, she found some profoundly helpful answers she was looking for, and she got a certification as a Bau-Biologist and Bau-Bio Inspector.

Out of her experiments with immune system-friendly chemicals for the home came Three Branches Healthy Living in 2012. The Minneapolis-based company eventually became Branch Basics (“Safe cleaning made simple”), with the advent of two other women partners: Allison Evans and Kelly Love.

From mess to clean, we’ll take care of everything in between is its slogan, and it sells multiple household and healthcare products on rungs for beginners, basic, and “elevated” customer levels.

Branch Basics’ flagship product is Branch Basics Concentrate, a-white-labeled nontoxic cleaner, which is 100 percent bio-based, biodegradable, Certified Made Safe, EWG-Verified, Cruelty-Free Verified, and independently tested as a non-skin or eye irritant. 

The “concentrate” model is the essence of Branch Basics’ subscription plan (the customer adds water). Products are also available at retail outlets, including Walgreens, Walmart, and Whole Foods. Its products have been featured in People, Real Simple, Forbes, O Magazine, and Women’s Health.

“We never set out to sell soap,” says Nelson. “We’re on a mission to help people create healthy homes and experience the power of pure.”

“The three of us started Branch Basics to help people toss the toxins and live healthy lives,” says Nelson. “We start with the removal of cleaning products that contain some of the most toxic chemicals found in our homes.”

Branch Basics employs about 30 people. It’s privately held, and angel/incubator/accelerator backed. In 2023, it earned about $40 M in revenue.

Nelson’s advice to fellow entrepreneurs is to take things one step at a time. She tells this story to support that point:

“While I was in the process of helping my young son recover, I had this moment of realization. We were outside lying on cots. He could not be in a tent, because he was so sensitive. It was out in the fresh air. I'm looking up at the stars, it's probably around midnight, everyone's asleep, my husband, my son, and I'm just saying to myself, ‘What have I not done? What have I not done?’ 

“And I just had this urge, or this thought came into my head: I need to go in and remove the box that's in my bathroom that I had put my favorite products in, my favorite perfumes, my favorite skincare, just some things that I thought, well, once he gets better, I will get these out. And at the time I put them in there, I’d thought, ‘Well, they're in the box in this room, and it's not going to bother him.”

“I argued with myself that night, and I finally just got up, and took it out. I didn't tell my husband, and I didn't tell my son because they would've both thought I was crazy and why would you do that?”

“But, the next day, when my son came in for his lunch – he’d stay outside most of the time, but he'd come in some – he’d been in there for a few minutes. He says, ‘Mom, what'd you do?’ And I said, ‘What are you talking about," and I just [played dumb]. And he said, ‘I don't know. I just don't feel agitated like I usually do when I'm in the house.’ I said, ‘Really? Well, why don't you just stay in as long as you feel that way?’ 

“Anyway, he ended up spending the night in that room.”

One box at a time. One replacement at a time. One breath at a time … That’s the mission of Branch Basics. To provide refillable products that empower families just like theirs to better care for themselves and other so everyone enjoys optimal health.