From toxin concerns to healthy knowledge

A DIRECT BENEFIT: With 15,000 sales consultants across the nation, Ava Anderson Non Toxic is on a mission to educate as well as sell products for home and health care. At company headquarters with some products, from left, Maurice Mizraha, accountant, Marianne Perez, director of consultant and customer service, Anna Soares, director of consultant administration, and Natash Mitrano, purchasing director. / PBN PHOTO/RUPERT WHITELEY
A DIRECT BENEFIT: With 15,000 sales consultants across the nation, Ava Anderson Non Toxic is on a mission to educate as well as sell products for home and health care. At company headquarters with some products, from left, Maurice Mizraha, accountant, Marianne Perez, director of consultant and customer service, Anna Soares, director of consultant administration, and Natash Mitrano, purchasing director. / PBN PHOTO/RUPERT WHITELEY

There’s a good chance you’ve never met an entrepreneur like Ava Anderson. When she was 14 years old, she became aware of the toxins and harmful chemicals that are in many home and personal care products on store shelves in the United States.

The more she learned, the more horrified she became, all compounded by the fact that she couldn’t find items in the store that she was comfortable using.

So – at an age when most teens are worried about their latest crush or their next sports game – she founded Ava Anderson Non Toxic. Anderson was 15.

“After I’d done months and months of research and I was really coming up with nothing, I turned to my parents and brought them in the loop of what I was really doing in my bedroom – homework was just part of it,” she said.

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Her parents had always been entrepreneurial, so it wasn’t far fetched to think that the family would start this business that Anderson was so passionate about.

“Ava had this idea and came to me, and it wasn’t like, ‘Can we do this?’ it was, ‘How can we do this?’ ” said Anderson’s mom, Kim, who is president of Ava Anderson Non Toxic. Anderson’s brother, Frohman Anderson Jr., is vice president.

In the beginning, she took a list of chemicals that she wanted to avoid to a private-label manufacturer. The formulators initially told her they couldn’t make products for her that would lack those ingredients, but eventually agreed to try. Within three months, Ava Anderson Non Toxic had samples for its first six-product line.

Now 21 and a senior at Babson College in Wellesley, Mass., Anderson has been invited to testify before Congress twice, has given a TED Talk and is CEO of one of the fastest-growing, direct-sales companies in the country. The Warren-based company offers more than 90 products in 17 categories, including home-cleaning products, baby care, cosmetics, sunscreen, hair care and pet care.

Over the past six years, Ava Anderson Non Toxic has grown to include 90 employees at its headquarters and nearly 15,000 sales consultants across the country. For the past year, the company has added 1,000 consultants per month, Kim said.

Anderson and her mother stress that the direct-sales model was the only one that would make sense for their mission of being what they call an education wellness company, informing people about their products, and perhaps more importantly, ingredients they say should be avoided.

They share that if there are 20,000 avaHOURS [home parties] with 10 attendees each in a month, 200,000 families would be educated by the company in one month.

“That’s needle-moving stuff on chemical policy right there,” Kim Anderson said.

The Andersons also sought to make sure consultants would see clear financial benefits from their position. Compensation includes 30-50 percent on every sale.

“We did everything possible so they’ll have money in their pockets, so they’ll have no reason to not continue to spread the message,” Ava Anderson said. It’s important that the army of consultants continues to grow, because she says consumers will never see her company’s products on a store shelf.

“There’s not more than an inch-and-a-half, maybe, on the back [label of a product] to educate the consumer, and that is just not enough. So when you go to an avaHOUR, you’re getting really valuable information,” she said.

And the company’s mission seems to resonate. The company’s run rate has tripled from this time last year, to an annual sales level of $40 million, and the company has seen 200 and 300 percent annual growth for the past few years.

If growth is flat over the next year, Kim Anderson said, the company will have 28,000 consultants. “But that’s flat, and we haven’t done anything flat,” she said. •

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