Ava Anderson Says Independent Lab Concludes Products Are Safe

WARREN, RI—The family behind Ava Anderson Non Toxic said on Wednesday—two days after they abruptly closed their multimillion-dollar home and personal care product business citing online bullying and harassment—that they had their products tested by a “highly reputable independent third party laboratory” that concluded they contained “no chemicals of concern.”

Kim Anderson, mother of company namesake and founder Ava Anderson, said in an interview that the company asked the lab to “test for everything they could” and “we passed with flying colors.”

“We can turn the [shopping] carts back on,” she said, referring to the company’s online ordering system which has been in stasis since the closure on Monday. The management team said they will reboot the company with a new brand name with in-house made products before the end of the month.

According to a statement from the company, the lab, which was not named, tested the products for 73 synthetic compounds “including phthalates and semi volatile compounds.”

“Our products were found, under this testing program, to contain no chemicals of concern, detected above a concentration of 0.02 [percent],” the statement read.

The stunning shuttering of the brand and direct-sales business, which reportedly generated $50 million in revenue last year, came about two weeks after the company disclosed that two of its products contained synthetic fragrances.

The company said that they were the victims of unscrupulous vendors who violated contractual agreements to ensure that every ingredient was naturally-derived but it was still troubling news for the 12,000 independent Ava Anderson consultants, who sell the brand’s cleaners, shampoo and creams on social media and at Tupperware-style parties. Those consultants have banked on the company’s promises of all-natural ingredients along with re-telling the remarkable success story of a 14-year-old Barrington girl’s kitchen-table idea in 2009 blossoming into a thriving company.

The increasing scrutiny of the brand has been fueled in large part by an intrepid Wisconsin blogger, Jess Brandt, who has been sniffing and asking questions about Ava Anderson products for some time.

On Friday, she posted on her ecofriendlymamausa blog that she had Hampden-Sydney College Chemistry Professor Kevin M. Dunn analyze the company’s popular Ava Dish Soap and he concluded that it did not contain vegetable oil or soap. What it does contain, he said, was water, a surfactant (likely a sodium alkyl sulfonate), a water soluble mineral like sodium or potassium chloride, and scent.

Brandt said she has been plagued by the riddle of the dish soap for three years, wondering why it bubbled so well, cleaned so well and “worked way better than other natural ingredient based soaps I’d tried,” she wrote.

“Wow, I thought, this ingredient label is great and it works so well. But then it hit me: it really doesn’t add up. What makes the suds?”

The Ava Dish Soap analysis follows a trail of correspondence Brandt has posted to her blog between herself and Kim Anderson about the ingredients in a variety of products. In several instances, Brand said her persistence appears to have prompted the company to notify consultants of ingredient omissions on labels.

On Jan. 8, the company said in a weekly email to consultants that as they move more production in-house, they learned “upon questioning our contract manufacturer” that an emulsifier they described as olive oil based was not listed on the ingredient labels for hand lotions, moisturizers, body butter, dream cream and diaper cream.

In the message announcing the closure posted on the Ava Anderson website on Monday, the family acknowledged ingredient issues by saying that “several” of their suppliers violated contractual agreements, but did not elaborate.

“We created this line to share an important health message and are devastated to have discovered this. We shared the information with all of our independent representatives and affected customers,” the message stated.

In the telephone interview, Anderson said that the company had been ”getting killed on this” and never set out to mislead anyone about ingredients. She did say that consultants were told “they don’t need to go sharing this on Facebook but to share it with the customers affected.”

But that doesn’t mean the company hasn’t tried to be transparent and responsive to concerns, Anderson said.

And the true reason for the family’s decision to step away, Anderson said is emotional and physical exhaustion. She described a family consumed and at-times overwhelmed by running the business.

“[Ava] has not been able to live for six years,” Anderson said, her voice cracking Starting at age 14, she has constantly been tethered to her phone and social media to support the brand “ ”running into my room asking me ‘how do I answer this?’”

“It is a fire drill 20 to 30 times a day,” Anderson said. “It is unbearable but we’ve tolerated it because we were so passionate about teaching the message.”

Anderson said the decision to close the business happened on a Sunday night.

It was a setting similar to the dinner table conversation six years ago that sparked the launching of the brand.

Anderson said the bullying had been ratcheting up “and we just reached the point of having a nervous breakdown.

“It was never about the money,” Anderson said. “This was to change chemical policy.”

More details about the company reboot are expected in the coming days.