Rustic Strength Bringing Truth to the Label

I recently came home after a difficult day to find a box on my doorstep, and it was just the spot of joy I needed. I opened it to find a beautiful assortment of soaps and household products from a family-run company based right out of Laura Ingalls Wilder country in the Missouri Ozarks. As a lover of all things natural, my heart was instantly happy. 

But the real magic happened when I started using the items. I quickly fell in love with the uplifting smell of fresh linen, the gentle way the products felt on my skin, and the nourishing coconut conditioner that left my hair feeling really soft. As many customers of Rustic Strength say, “When you use truly clean products, your skin is just happy.”

It made me wonder how a company gets it this right. As it turns out, the secret behind Rustic Strength comes down to a family who refused to compromise when it mattered most.

When Brandon and Alicia Adamson’s young son, Devin, spent half of his kindergarten year in and out of an allergist’s office dealing with life-threatening allergies and asthma, they reached a breaking point. They had tried everything: overhauling their diet, tearing out carpeting, getting rid of fake plants, feather pillows, and changing their detergents. They were constantly carrying EpiPens because his reactions were quick and severe.

One afternoon, Brandon held up their bottle of commercial laundry detergent. “What is actually in this?” he asked. He turned the bottle over, but an ingredient list was nowhere to be found.

That single question sparked a journey to uncover the truth about the soaps, cleaners, and synthetic fragrances they used every day. It ultimately led them to formulate their own laundry soap, laying the foundation for Rustic Strength and its dedication to clean, transparent formulas. 

When skin rashes, allergies, and chronic irritation flare up, our first instinct is usually to overhaul our diets. What food changes do we need to make? Often, the last place we look is our immediate environment—and the products we welcome into our homes.

“Toxins come in all forms,” Alicia says. “Plug-ins, laundry soap, lotions. Companies aren’t even required to disclose the exact ingredients they use in their products. Hidden behind ‘greenwashing,’ many manufacturers mislead consumers into believing their products are much safer and more eco-friendly than they actually are.”

Determined to find a better way, the couple began making their own laundry detergent and soaps from scratch. Through endless tweaking and trialing, they noticed that they just felt better. Not only did
Devin’s severe chronic symptoms dramatically improve, but Alicia’s own endocrine and allergy issues began
to vanish.

It was a rigorous two-year process of getting every formula right, with technical guidance from experienced formulation experts in Brandon’s network to make sure each product was safe and effective. They tested it on themselves and their extended family, who were soon loving the products and begging for more.

The moment they knew they had nailed it came during a family Christmas gathering. Alicia’s infant great-niece threw up all over her outfit. “It was bad!” Alicia laughs. Desperate, her niece asked, “Do you have anything that can get this out?” Alicia pulled out a sample of her homemade laundry soap. The formula lifted the heavy stain completely, leaving her niece flabbergasted. “Where on earth did you get this soap?!” she asked.

On the drive home, Brandon turned to Alicia and said, “I think we’ve really got something here. Shall we just go for it?” What he meant was: Are we ready to turn this passion into a company and share it with the world?

In 2018, they officially launched Rustic Strength—a name inspired by the “rustic” spirit of old-time, simple formulas and the “strength” of their powerful, plant- and mineral-based cleaning products.

STRICT STANDARDS

Rustic Strength draws a hard line against harsh chemicals, the kind often concealed under confusing trade names. If an ingredient contains phthalates or parabens, it’s an automatic no. The same goes for formaldehyde-releasing agents, even ones that don’t look like formaldehyde on the label but break down and release it over time on the shelf. And the company has always stayed completely away from SLS, SLES, and especially ethoxylated alcohols.

“Ethoxylated alcohols are where 1,4-dioxane comes from, a byproduct of how those ingredients are made, and a likely human carcinogen,” Brandon explains.

“A few years ago, New York passed a first-in-the-nation law capping how much 1,4-dioxane household products can contain, and some big-name detergents tested over the limit and had to be reformulated to keep selling there. But here’s the thing: nationally, companies still aren’t required to strip it out, and because it’s a byproduct rather than an added ingredient, it never shows up on the label.”

For Rustic Strength, truthfulness is everything. “If you’re running a business and have to lie about what you’re doing to get a sale, it’s not worth it. I want to be able to sleep at night,” Brandon says. That commitment to transparency comes from their own experience knowing how easy it is to grab a jug of conventional laundry detergent that looks clean on the label while hiding contaminants underneath.

Alicia adds, “We research every ingredient. We look at how safe it is for people, then how safe it is for the environment, and we make our decisions from there.”

EXCELLENCE IN EVERY ASPECT

Medals for road races, triathlons, and trail runs line the walls of Brandon and Alicia’s home exercise room. “We’re amateur athletes—we swim, bike, run, and lift,” Alicia says, remaining modest about their achievements. “Triathlons are painful. So we keep signing up to do them until we get better at it,” she laughs.

It is that same commitment to personal excellence and pushing past limits that the couple brings directly to their products. Their dedication has earned Rustic Strength the recognition of being named #2 in Consumer Products on Inc.’s 2026 Regionals Midwest list, and #11 overall.

So, what makes their formulas so uniquely excellent?

Small Batches: “We don’t have giant mix tanks, and we don’t bottle soap just to let it sit on a shelf for a year,” Brandon explains. “We are constantly batching and filling the orders that come in. If you get a delivery from us, it was probably made within the last one to two weeks.”

The Personal Touch: Unlike brands that outsource production to massive corporate chemical plants, the family handles almost everything firsthand in their  85,000-square-foot manufacturing, office, and warehouse facility with the help of 40-plus employees.

Alicia, acting as President, leads R&D, brand voice, and customer care, and brings an educational and product-focused perspective. Brandon, acting as CFO, oversees finance, operations and ingredient sourcing. Their daughter, Jillian, runs the accounting, and Devin, the very child whose childhood allergies started this journey, is now the resident “scent master” working on the R&D team and product development!

Complete Control: Excluding their alpaca dryer balls, wool dryer balls, and wool scrubs—which are sourced from small family farms in the U.S.—every single product is created under their own roof in the Ozarks. “We believe that we need to be involved in every single aspect, which includes the manufacturing,” Brandon notes. “Without that strict control, you never really know exactly what’s going to end up in a product or what residue was left behind in a third-party tank.”

Quality Ingredients: “Paying a premium for a high-quality raw material is entirely worth it,” Brandon says. “Trying to save money on an ingredient only leads to consistency problems down the line.” Over the years, the company has built deep, mutual relationships with a few trusted suppliers, ensuring pure, high-performing ingredients.

CLOSING THE LOOP ON WASTE

True homestead living means preserving resources, and Rustic Strength was the first in the industry to launch a closed-loop refill program. “Plastic containers are fine, as long as you reuse them,” Alicia explains.

Through their Close the Loop™ container return program, customers are encouraged to save their shipping boxes and send empty jugs—including glass options—back to the facility in return for store credit. To date, they have diverted and reused:

1,976 one-gallon jugs

8,368 five-gallon containers

2,224 barrels

“We take back every piece of our packaging,” Alicia says. Once returned, the containers are sanitized, refilled, and sent right back out into circulation. By rejecting single-use “bag-in-a-box and pouch” options, which Alicia calls “trashtainers,” and sticking to sturdy, reusable materials, they have made a huge environmental impact.

Sustainable business isn’t just about what’s inside the bottle—it’s about the lifetime of the bottle itself.

A GRASSROOTS REFILL MOVEMENT

Large drums of detergent line the back wall of a cozy main-street shop in North Carolina. A customer walks in carrying empty glass jugs, fills them with exactly the amount of laundry soap and powdered stain remover she needs, weighs them, and heads to the counter to pay.

This scene is playing out all across the nation through Rustic Strength’s two distinct, homestead-friendly models:

The At-Home Bulk Model: Families can order 5-gallon containers that ship free directly to their door. Setting up their own refill station right at home, filling smaller working bottles as needed, using less per clean, and restocking far less often than they would with grocery store products. The same idea as we already apply to flour, feed, or canning supplies is seamlessly applied to laundry and cleaning.

The Wholesale & Refill-Shop Program: Beyond mail-in returns, a grassroots movement has been growing rapidly since 2018. Today, Rustic Strength partners with hundreds of independent local refill stations scattered through small country stores, farmers markets, homesteading hubs, mothers’ groups, and refill businesses.

“These zero-waste and bulk refill businesses find us because of our strict ingredient transparency and standards,” Alicia explains. “We encourage people to support these local shops as much as they can. We aren’t looking to get our products into giant big-box stores like Target or Walmart. We want to support small businesses to keep local economies strong.”

Through these local refill partnerships, the movement has collectively kept the equivalent of over 1.3 million single-use bottles out of landfills.

HELPING THE NEXT GENERATION

If you’re a homesteader dreaming of launching your own skincare or cleaning line, you already know how steep the barrier to entry can be. When Brandon and Alicia first started out, they hit a frustrating reality: most raw ingredient manufacturers require you to buy a literal truckload of inventory just to get a foot in the door. For a small-scale family business, that’s an impossible hurdle.

Remembering those early struggles, Rustic Strength now acts as a bridge for the little guy. They’ve made it possible to launch a brand with as little as a single gallon jug of soap. 

While buying by the semi-truck yields better profit margins down the road, this low-threshold option lets aspiring entrepreneurs test the waters without risking their life savings. It’s a simple online wholesale application to join their dedicated family of refillers—many of whom have been growing alongside Rustic Strength for years.

EVOLUTION OF THE PRODUCT LINE

While laundry detergent was Rustic Strength’s cornerstone, their lineup quickly evolved to meet customer demand. “Our second product was hand soap, which I’m a huge fan of,” Brandon says—so much so that he had been carrying a bottle of the homemade version everywhere he went since the earliest testing days. “I couldn’t stand using commercial soaps anymore,” he admits. “Once your body adjusts to truly clean products, you immediately smell the chemicals and feel the harshness in everything else.”

“From there, we expanded into dish soap, shampoo, conditioner, cleaners, and lotion,” he adds.

A standout product is the multi-purpose spray cleaner that Alicia nailed as a versatile formula that works across all surfaces. While many commercial cleaners fail on glass or require separate formulas for different surfaces, this one works seamlessly across the board, from greasy kitchen countertops to windows.

The true test of any cleaning product is how it handles real-world messes. Rustic Strength’s formulas have tackled everything from baby spit-up and stinky running clothes to heavy mechanic grease. “We have a lot of people from the farming community who swear by it,” Alicia says. “It holds up to actual farm work. It’s tough-working, but gentle on people’s skin.”

Inside my own delivered box lay a product I hadn’t tried yet: the Oxy Boost Stain Remover. Intrigued by my interview with Brandon and Alicia, I was ready to put those farming testimonials to the test. I tossed my husband’s grimy farm clothes into the washer, added a few pumps of Rustic Strength detergent, and dumped a scoop of the Oxy Boost into the water. A few hours later, I opened the dryer door. The stubborn dirt, grease, and pasture grime were gone.

Just like the day that box arrived on my doorstep, I couldn’t help but smile. In a world of complicated labels and hidden ingredients, it’s comforting to find a family business whose only secret is a fresh, clean formula that truly works.

To place an order, find a refill station, or become a wholesaler visit rusticstrength.com or email them at [email protected]. And don’t forget to use code HL15 for 15% off your first order.