About this episode
In 2013, Gregg Renfrew founded Beautycounter—the beauty brand that pioneered what we know today as the clean beauty movement. The brand gained a well-respected reputation for its commitment to using safe ingredients in its products and for refusing to include any formulas that contained questionable or harmful chemicals. Renfrew’s commitment to customer health and her advocacy for cosmetic regulation set her apart from her competitors at a time when clean beauty was just an idea, not an entire industry. She last joined us in 2019, before the company's sale to a private equity firm in a deal that valued the brand at $1 billion. Since then, she’s had to make several pivots—from being asked to step down as CEO to leaving her own company to watching it go into foreclosure. Her latest pivot has involved starting a new company with the same commitment to clean beauty called Counter, and she’s back to tell us all about the new venture.