They’re Just Like Us! Honest Celeb Brand’s Illusory Persona Fading

Editorial: The Honest Company’s “safer, healthier products” positioning has eroded substantially due to legal challenges, ingredient disputes and scrapes with competitors. It’s perhaps fitting at this point that the firm reportedly has been in acquisition talks with mainstream multinationals after years of masquerading as a uniquely principled outsider.

The Honest Company swept ever so sweetly onto the scene in 2011 with the promise of safer products for conscientious parents, capitalizing on rampant chemophobia that has bolstered the “natural” movement and impliedly casting the competition as disingenuous poisoners of unwitting families.

The strategy worked. The firm’s business ballooned from around $10m in sales in 2012 to $250m in 2014, leading to a $1

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