As reported in Crains Detroit Business, Truly Free Home Inc. is a fast-growing maker and supplier of hypoallergenic cleaning products for the home that has given new life to a long-abandoned supermarket just north of Traverse City. And it's built a nearly $50 million-a-year business, and growing, from the northwest Lower Peninsula, selling its "clean" products - and through a new marketplace, those of other brands.
Truly Free's 51,000-square-foot building, formerly a Tom's Supermarket, sits across U.S. 31 from the
Grand Traverse Resort and Spa. It opened in 2023 after a buildout of $5.5 million as part of a 22-acre project called Oak Shore Commerce Park, developed and owned by the Strathmore Real Estate Group of East Lansing. Truly Free CEO Stephen Ezell said the company had revenue of almost $50 million in 2024 and he hopes to double that this year with the birth of a related company, Truly Free Market Inc. whose trulyfree.com site hopes to help small retailers reach and serve customers more effectively and cheaply than through Amazon.
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Ezell is raising an investment fund for the site, with a target of $15 million to $25 million, and has begun meeting with would-be investors after a soft launch to prove the concept. One customer is Ideal Living LLC of Sherman Oaks, Calif., which sells water and air purification systems. "Truly Free has been an invaluable partner in spreading awareness about the importance of a non toxic home." said Ideal Living Senior Vice-President Helen Christoni. "Through their newsletters and website, they educate their community on household toxins and provide practical solutions for reducing exposure."
Truly Free Home currently has about 100 employees, including 70 in the Traverse region, and IT, software developers, marketing and distribution staff in the United Kingdom, Canada, India, Jamaica, Mexico and Costa Rica. It has 36 products of its own for the kitchen, laundry and bathroom, with prices ranging from two for $9 to $24. Sales are mostly through mail order. A customer's first order comes with a plastic bottle for mixing with water the powder that comes in a packet. Subsequent orders come with just the packet and customers reuse the plastic, part of the company's stated mission to reduce waste. Products include chlorine-free bleach; an enzyme stain remover; sheets for the dryer to make clothes smell better; a dishwasher rinse aid; a heavy-duty pot and pan spray; a washing machine cleaner; sweet basil dish soap; and an air freshener.
A Great Recession rebound
Selling soap was the last thing Ezell ever thought he'd be doing. He thought he'd be in the restaurant business for life, having started when he was 11 by washing dishes. By the time he was in his early 30s, he had built some 50 mostly high-end restaurants in and around New York City, including some he ran through his own company, Market Kitchen LLC; some he built for Donatella Arpaia Stewart, a restaurateur and judge on the Food Network's "Iron Chef America"; and some for a group called Restaurant Associates. It was a high-flying, highly financed business when the Great Recession hit. "I had millions of dollars on the books, but by 2009, I had lost everything," he said. Which directly led to him and his wife, Amy, moving to northern Michigan.
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She had attended Interlachen Arts Academy, and they frequently vacationed in the Traverse City area. He says he even proposed to her while on vacation there. In 2010, he sold his fishing boat on eBay and they moved to Michigan, where he did some consulting and board work with local restaurant groups and family-owned businesses. In 2008, their first son, Jonah, had been born and three weeks later broke out in a severe rash. He and his wife got advice on steroids and drugs from a dermatologist and a pediatrician, but it was advice from a family friend that made the difference. She asked them what detergent they were using, and said the boy was likely allergic to one or more of its ingredients. They eventually started making their own detergent. In late 2011, Ezell was shopping at a farmer's market in Traverse City and bought some laundry soap to try from an elderly woman named Ruth Smith who made it at home. Their son had no reaction to it. Ezell liked the soap so much, he invested in a startup soap company with the woman called Selestial Soap LLC. Ezell began selling soap to boutique stores and health-food stores throughout the region, making deliveries from the back of his pickup truck. They were eking out a living, but barely. Ezell said he did something desperate in 2015. "My last-ditch effort to save the company was to build a website," he said. "I knew nothing about digital marketing, but I taught myself how to build a website." And the business began migrating from the back of his truck to online.
About that time, he began getting some consulting help from Craig Wesley, a successful entrepreneur for 30 years in Silicon Valley who cashed out with the sale of a tech company in 2012 and moved the next year to Traverse City, where he founded the Wesley Performance Group, a consulting firm. "I have had a front row seat to the remarkable journey Stephen has navigated, beginning with three people sitting around the table trying to figure out what to do with Selestial Soap, to the very profitable organization he now runs," said Wesley, who in October was named executive director of the 20Fathoms business incubator in Traverse City. "Craig helped us craft our strategy and with strategic thinking," said Ezell. "Craig was very instrumental in helping us open up doors and overcoming challenges." Wesley said the lessons Ezell learned building up his distribution network will lay the groundwork for success at the new venture. "He realized that what he learned had direct relevance to vast numbers of other online sellers, who face the increasingly onerous business practices Amazon imposes on its sellers," he said. "Stephen launched Truly Free Market as an alternative for sellers, where they can build their brand and actually own the customer relationship," said Wesley. "It is very early stage, and of course has nowhere near the adoption of other marketplaces, but from my own personal view of observing Stephen's tenacity over the years, I can assure you it's a story that you are going to want to follow.
Within a year or two of Wesley's involvement, Truly Free was grossing $100,000 a year, and by 2019, sales were more than $200,000 a year. The real breakout, said Ezell, came when COVID hit in 2020. "It was a great time to be making hand soap. Everyone was washing their hands," said Ezell, and yearly revenue soared past the $1 million mark. Since then, the company has seen its growth go vertical, having positioned itself to ride a wave of consumer interest in "clean" products. "We were ahead of the curve in developing non-toxic formulations, but early on, consumer adoption lagged behind. With increasing awareness and demand for cleaner products, what was once niche has become mainstream,'' COO Don Howe said. "Our early leadership in this space positioned us perfectly to capitalize on this shift, allowing us to scale at the right time."
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More happy customers
Emily Bain is CEO of Wellnesse PBC, a company based in Santa Rosa Beach, Fla., that makes a wide range of hygiene products such as toothpastes, plant-based dental floss, shampoos, hand sanitizers and deodorants. "We have been with Truly Free Market since they launched. They have been incredible to work with," said Bain. "We love working with them because it exposes our products to a whole new market." "I have been a customer for at least 6 years," said Sonja Jones of Bandera, Tex. "After I did research, many, many years ago, about chemicals in facial and skin products, I decided to use non-chemical cleansers. I used to make my own laundry detergent and then found Truly Free and use most of their cleaning products. "When I get into a conversation with someone about cleaning products, I always tell them about Truly Free. I love that the company also supports people in need, whether it's a deaf community in Jamaica, helping those rescued from human trafficking or even during the pandemic they had a drive-thru service giving away their laundry wash and rinse."
Nora Key, a resident of the Seattle, Wash., area, has been a happy customer since 2018. She was on a webinar about essential oils and the person leading it talked about this Michigan company making great products. Key said she ordered a laundry detergent, liked it and then ordered a laundry rinse, "and now I use just about everything they have."
In 2022, Ezell bought Smith and some investors out and renamed the company Truly Free. Early that year, a broker told him about the former Tom's site. "We needed space. There was nothing this size in northern Michigan," he said. At the time, the company was operating out of five small spaces in buildings near the Cherry Capital Airport on the south side of town.
Ezell has a 10-year lease with an option for a second 10 years. The buildout was extensive, with Strathmore picking up the tab for hauling off forty 30-foot dumpsters filled with torn-down interior walls, bricks and cinderblock. Truly Free's only retail presence is in the first room off the main entrance to the building, a retail operation being a requirement for township approval. Most of the building is devoted to packaging, warehousing and distribution. Much of the mixing of various chemical components for an end product is done by Haviland Products Co. in Grand Rapids.
Being in the former Tom's store has a particular resonance for Ezell. "This was a museum of my mistakes," he said, pointing around the building. Operating on a shoestring budget- "We had no money" -and trying to get his foot in the door at a northern Michigan grocery chain, with seven large stores-Ezell repurposed old wooden pallets and built seven display counters he hoped he could get Tom's to use to display Truly Free products. "They didn't want to buy our products," he said. So, brazenly, he went in at night after managers had gone home and set out his buy-one-get-one-free display cases. Tom's folks weren't impressed by his enthusiasm. "We got cursed out and told to get out," said Ezell. "I rented a Penske truck and put my tail between my legs."
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