Counter (formerly Beautycounter)
Gregg Renfrew's entrepreneurial journey began long before Beautycounter. She cut her teeth in sales, selling Xerox machines and facing doors slammed in her face—a humbling introduction to business. Her first major venture was an early online wedding registry that caught the attention of Martha Stewart, leading to an acquisition. However, her brief stint leading a clothing company ended abruptly when she was fired by messenger in front of her team, a brutal lesson in corporate dynamics that would shape her future approach to leadership.
The real turning point came when Gregg identified a massive gap in the beauty industry: clean beauty didn't exist. At a time when the cosmetics market was dominated by products filled with potentially harmful chemicals, she recognized an opportunity to build not just a product, but a movement. This insight became the foundation for Beautycounter, which would revolutionize how women thought about the beauty products they used daily.
Rather than pursuing traditional direct-to-consumer channels, Gregg leveraged direct sales as her primary growth engine. She built an army of 60,000 salespeople who became advocates for the brand, creating a community-driven approach that outperformed traditional DTC models. This strategy allowed Beautycounter to scale to hundreds of millions in sales, proving that when executed correctly, direct sales could be a more powerful growth channel than conventional e-commerce.
Gregg's ambition paid off spectacularly when Beautycounter sold for $1 billion. However, victory was bittersweet. Within months of the acquisition, she was pushed out of the company she had created and nurtured. The experience of being removed from her own creation—despite the financial success—became an unexpected crucible that tested her resilience and sense of identity.
In a rare turn of events, Gregg took the extraordinary step of buying her company back, only to lose it again. Rather than retreating, she made the risky and unconventional decision to rebuild from scratch under a new brand called Counter. This second act required not just business acumen, but profound humility and a willingness to start over—this time, hopefully, doing it differently.
- •Gregg identified a genuine market gap (clean beauty didn't exist) rather than building a 'me-too' product, giving Beautycounter a unique positioning that resonated with health-conscious consumers.
- •She leveraged direct sales as a differentiated growth channel instead of copying the DTC playbook, building a 60,000-person sales force that created authentic community advocacy and scaled to hundreds of millions in revenue.
- •She built a movement, not just a product—positioning Beautycounter as part of a larger mission around safer beauty, which galvanized customers and attracted top talent willing to evangelize the brand.
- •Her willingness to learn from failure (the clothing company firing, the dot-com crash) and adapt her approach (moving from online registry to beauty) demonstrated the resilience required to survive setbacks and spot new opportunities.
- •Even after being forced out of her $1B company, she chose to rebuild rather than retire, showing the kind of founder conviction and identity-with-mission that enables true comebacks.
- 1.Identify a structural gap in an established industry where consumer needs are unmet—not just a marginal improvement—by talking directly to frustrated customers and observing what doesn't exist yet.
- 2.Choose a distribution model that aligns with your product's ethos and community values; if your brand is built on personal advocacy, consider direct sales or community-driven channels over pure e-commerce.
- 3.Build your narrative around a movement or mission that transcends the product itself, making customers and team members feel part of something larger than commerce.
- 4.After a major exit, resist the temptation to stay in a compromised position; if you've lost control of your creation, evaluate whether buying back or rebuilding is worth the effort—only proceed if you're committed to doing it differently.
- 5.Maintain humility about your failures and mistakes; Gregg learned from being fired and from 'growth at all costs' mistakes, which informed her approach to building Counter more thoughtfully the second time.
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