Gregg Renfrew Wants to Redefine Clean Beauty—Again

In ELLE’s series Office Hours, we ask people in powerful positions to take us through their first jobs, worst jobs, and everything in between. This month, we’re catching up with Gregg Renfrew, the former CEO and founder of Beautycounter. In 2013, the brand was one of the first in the original “clean beauty”” movement. Renfrew even testified before Congress to help pass the Modernization of Cosmetics Regulation Act, and by 2021, the company was valued at $1 billion. But the brand faced turbulent times. Shortly after she was asked to step down, it went into foreclosure. Now, Renfrew has relaunched it as Counter. The brand has a new name and updated packaging, but those who swore by certain Beautycounter products can still find their favorites. “They’re in different packaging, but they’re the same goop inside,” she says. Below, Renfrew talks about working under Martha Stewart, the new journey of being an entrepreneur (again), and her thoughts on the future of clean beauty.

My first job

I always wanted to have my own money. I’ve had jobs forever: waitressing, cocktail waitressing, working in delis, summer jobs, cleaning houses. I did anything and everything [starting when] I was about 10 years old. [When I was 19], I decided to start a cleaning company on Nantucket. I was living with a family out there, and trying to earn enough money to go on a program called Semester at Sea. I started the cleaning company with a couple of friends and cold-called every single real estate broker on the island to explain why I felt like our service would be better. Someone gave me a shot, and we ended up making around $18,000 that summer. It was more money than I’d ever had.

My worst job

My worst job was a moment in time. It wasn’t the job itself, per se. It was when I sold my first company, The Wedding List, to Martha Stewart. I had to work within an organization where I no longer called the shots on a brand that I had built, and had to answer to both Martha Stewart and her chief operating officer, Sharon Patrick, neither of whom ever agreed on anything. I was always caught in the crossfire. It’s not that the job itself was so difficult—it wasn’t like when I was cleaning toilets in college. I was [just] in this impossible situation where I felt like no matter what I did, I wouldn’t win.

Why I started Beautycounter

In 2006, I watched the film An Inconvenient Truth, at the urging of my friend Lela Rose. It was the first time I became truly impassioned with the environmental health movement. Up until that moment in time, I was unaware that I was doing things that were detrimental to the Earth. I started making changes, like getting rid of certain household cleaning products and switching from plastic to glass. Concurrently, I watched many of my friends struggle with fertility issues. I had a number of friends being diagnosed in their early 30s with different types of cancer. I started to wonder, What’s going wrong with the health of the Earth? What’s going wrong with human health? Where are the connections between the two?

Eco brands were only appealing to a small subset of the market. I thought, Why can’t I have products that look beautiful, perform extremely well, are on-trend, and are also [clean]? I decided to start Beautycounter as a movement for change within an industry that was antiquated and needed someone to come in and disrupt it.

What happened to Beautycounter

I sold the company in May of 2021. The day we closed, the world opened up for the first time since the pandemic, and we were let out of our houses. That summer was challenging, because people redirected their spend away from beauty and personal care to fashion and travel and things that they hadn’t been spending money on. That made my investors nervous, and they made the decision to remove me as CEO. They brought in a CEO who didn’t feel that there was room for both of us in the organization. After his tenure, the board of directors called me to ask me if I would consider coming back in. I reentered the business in February 2024, but it was just too late. The business at that point was broken. [The investors] decided to no longer fund the business, which was a really difficult decision, and [it] went into foreclosure.

How I bought my company back

On a Sunday night before we were going into liquidity or auction, I got a phone call through my lawyers from Bank of America to say, “You built an incredible business. You’re an incredible founder, and we’re going to lose our money on this transaction, but we would really like to afford you the opportunity to buy your business back.” I spoke to my family. My youngest daughter, Georgie, was crying, saying, “Mommy, you just can’t let this die.” I dug deep financially and emotionally, locked arms with my family, a couple of my old investors, and [a] new one, and made the decision that we were going to buy the business out of foreclosure. We did that [in] about 48 hours, which was amazing, and then I had a complete panic attack. I was like, “Oh my gosh, what have I done?”

[But] when I looked at the business, around April 2024, I realized that there was not a clear path forward, and we made the very difficult decision to [temporarily] shut the business down. We spent the next 13 and a half months reimagining everything to relaunch [as] this new company, Counter.

What it feels like to turn Beautycounter into Counter

When I bought the business, I had no plan to [re]build the company. My plan was to come and do a turnaround, and instead, I found myself with a company that I was shutting down and then having to reimagine. It’s been both exciting and invigorating and also really, really scary, if I’m being honest. It’s very stressful not having all the answers—not that you ever have all the answers. It’s been an incredibly interesting learning exercise for me, trying to reimagine the company and launch something new.

My hope for clean beauty

I think that “clean” has in many ways become table stakes, but I see a lot of the same cleanwashing that we saw in greenwashing before, where people are claiming to be clean, but not necessarily living up to clean standards. The definition of clean is confusing and watered down by different multibranded retailers who have all different programs. One of the opportunities we have is to set a definitive standard for clean that hopefully could be clearly articulated across the industry, so both consumers and brands know what they’re working toward.

Another important goal for me is to [empower] women through this opportunity. While I wanted to make the world healthier and safer and better for all, I also fell in love with leading and working with women, and inspiring them to have the confidence to focus on what they want to do in life. As I’ve gotten older and been greatly humbled by what went down, I lead with humility. I want to better utilize technology and our social platforms than we did last time, to reach many more women, to let them know that we believe in them, and that the power of their community and their collective voice can actually make the world better. I’m really focused on our community, personalizing the opportunity [to sell Counter products], and letting them know that we can put aside differences and find common ground as women. That is a very powerful thing that, as a brand, we can do together with them.

The biggest business takeaways I’ve learned from the past few years

There is no place for arrogance in business, in the workplace, or in the world. Through arrogance, you miss the opportunity to learn, to acknowledge institutional knowledge, and understand the context of why decisions were made. Arrogant people are not focused on the No. 1 asset of any and all companies, which is people. It doesn’t matter what business you’re in; you’re only ever going to be in the business of people.

I’ve come back in as a leader who has a way higher level of humility. I know that I’m in service to others. I can learn, co-create, and collaborate with them. That is what leadership should look like. I will never, ever take it for granted again. You owe gratitude to those who have supported you along the way—as customers, community members, [and] advocates for your brand. They’ve been through hell with us, have come back, and have stayed with me.

Lastly, I’d say, read the fine print on every contract and everything you do. The fine print matters, maybe not in good times, but certainly in bad times.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.