Vegan Essentials
One of the earliest online-only vegan retailers in the United States, founded in 1997, stocking food, cosmetics, clothing, and household goods.
Vegan Essentials is an American online-only vegan retailer, founded in 1997 by Ryan Howard and based in Waukesha, Wisconsin. The store stocks a broad range of vegan products — pantry staples, snacks, frozen meals, cosmetics, personal care items, clothing, footwear, and household goods — all verified to be free of animal ingredients.
Why it matters
Vegan Essentials is among the oldest continuously operating vegan online retailers in the United States; the Internet Archive shows the store trading under the same brand in 1999. For two decades before mainstream grocery picked up wide vegan SKU assortments, online stores like Vegan Essentials were the practical way for U.S. consumers outside large cities to buy specialty vegan goods.
Catalog
Thousands of SKUs across food (dry, frozen, refrigerated in some markets), supplements, beauty, clothing, and gifting. The retailer emphasizes strict screening — every listed product must be fully vegan — in contrast to general grocers that stock both vegan and non-vegan goods side by side.
Corporate
Vegan Essentials is privately held. The company is a useful primary-source reference for tracking the growth of the U.S. vegan product ecosystem back to the late 1990s, when the number of available SKUs was a small fraction of today’s.