How I Built This: Gregg Renfrew — The Founder Who Lost Beautycounter, Bought It Back, and Started Over

Gregg Renfrew built Beautycounter into a billion-dollar clean beauty brand by combining high-performance products with a direct-sales army of 60,000 women, only to be pushed out months after selling a majority stake to private equity giant Carlyle Group. In a remarkable turn, she bought the company back out of foreclosure for pennies on the dollar, shut it down, and relaunched as a new brand called Counter. This conversation with Guy Raz is a raw, unflinching look at the emotional toll of losing—and reclaiming—your identity as a founder, the hidden costs of "growth at all costs," and what it takes to rebuild after your life's work unravels twice.

06:15Selling Xerox Copiers and Learning to Handle Rejection

Renfrew's entrepreneurial journey began unconventionally. After college, her mother gave her a briefcase with her initials and a check for $5,000, telling her she was on her own. With $19,000 a year in salary and a $1,000 Amex bill she couldn't pay, Renfrew joined Xerox because it had "the best sales training program in the country." She was assigned the jewelry district in midtown Manhattan—a notoriously difficult territory because jewelers rarely needed copiers. She described cold-calling buildings where security would let her in, only to have "9 times out of 10" doors slammed in her face. She lasted less than two years, leaving not because of the job but because she fell in love, moved to Virginia, got married at 25, and was divorced within five months.

08:09The Wedding List: An Early Online Registry That Was Too Far Ahead

After her divorce, Renfrew spent time in London and Hong Kong, where she reconnected with Nicole Hindmarch, who ran a bespoke wedding registry service called The Wedding List. In pre-internet Britain, Hindmarch would meet with couples over tea, learn about their lives, help them curate a gift list, and then—after the wedding—run around London purchasing everything. Renfrew saw an opportunity to modernize this concept. She licensed the name and launched in New York with a showroom on 73rd Street, but her real innovation was migrating all purchasing online. "Anyone who's bought something off a registry knows it's super easy," she said. "But that was not easy to do in 1997." She cold-called the CEOs of Saks Fifth Avenue and Nordstrom, eventually striking a deal with Nordstrom that brought in a million dollars. At its peak, the business was doing about $4.5 million in revenue with 40 employees. But when the dot-com bubble burst in 2001, investors pulled funding. Renfrew learned a painful lesson: her investors had pushed "growth at all costs," expanding retail presence faster than she would have chosen. When the tide turned, "you're out over your skis, you're screwed." The company was forced into a sale.

21:58Working for Martha Stewart: Cockiness, Conflict, and a Lesson in Leadership

Martha Stewart's company bought the wedding registry business—its very first acquisition—and Renfrew stayed on for a year under contract. She reported to both Martha and COO Sharon Patrick, who "fought a lot." Renfrew described Martha as "exceptional," "highly intelligent," and "one of the most creative people I've ever met," but also as running a "fear-based organization" where getting yelled at was "par for the course." Renfrew was confident enough to push back: when Martha would ask "who chose that ugly shade of blue on that plate yesterday?" Renfrew would answer "you did, at the 2 o'clock meeting." She admitted she was "a little probably cocky" and a "pain in her ass." What she took from Martha was that attention to detail matters and that creativity and business can work together. But she also learned what kind of leader she didn't want to become—someone who doesn't take responsibility for their own decisions.

23:51Getting Fired by Messenger: Humiliation and a Hard Lesson in Ego

After leaving Martha Stewart, Renfrew was hired as CEO of Best and Company, a high-end children's brand owned by Tommy Hilfiger and his then-estranged wife Susie. The situation was complicated: Tommy wanted profitability, while Susie, the creative force, wasn't focused on financials. Renfrew admitted she came in with "a level of arrogance" from her dot-com success and didn't treat Susie with the respect she deserved. One day, in the middle of a meeting, a messenger arrived at the door, asked if she was Gregg Renfrew, and served her papers. The message: she was fired and had to leave the premises immediately. "Being fired by messenger was absolutely shocking," she recalled. She walked out, told her team, packed up, called a friend to pick her up, and "lost it." They drove out of town for the night. It was humiliating—and a lesson she would carry into her next chapter.

32:47The Birth of Beautycounter: Clean Beauty Didn't Exist

After moving to Los Angeles, Renfrew consulted for Jessica Alba, helping shape what became The Honest Company. But she had become "obsessed with toxic chemicals" after watching friends diagnosed with cancer and her nanny die of cancer at 31. She found it easy to switch to safer household cleaners and glass containers, but when it came to skincare and cosmetics, "there were some really great all-natural types of brands, but most of them didn't really work very well, or they didn't smell very good, or they weren't presented in a way that was aesthetically pleasing." She partnered with celebrity makeup artist Christy Coleman, who had been an early adopter of "green" products. The challenge was immense: as one partner put it, making the products she wanted was like asking for "the most decadent chocolate cake, except you can't use flour, eggs or sugar, and I want it done in six months." There was no such thing as "clean beauty" in 2010. Renfrew defined "clean" for herself as "high performing products that are significantly safer for your health, void of certain chemicals of concern." She insisted on U.S. manufacturing, working with multiple specialized facilities rather than one, and launched in 2013 with just nine products—a basic cleanser, day cream, night cream, and eye cream.

47:04The Direct Sales Army: Building a Movement, Not Just a Brand

Renfrew knew she needed e-commerce, but she also wanted customers to touch and feel products. Department stores were controlled by incumbents who didn't want stories about safer ingredients getting out. A friend suggested direct sales. "Hell no," she initially said. "I don't like those business models." But she researched companies like Avon and realized that a trusted recommendation from a friend is more valuable than any advertisement. She went on a roadshow across America, recruiting women to become brand representatives. They could buy products at wholesale, earn commission on sales, and—in a small percentage of cases—build teams and earn a small override. But Renfrew was careful to avoid the predatory practices associated with some MLMs: she flagged any order over $1,000 to prevent reps from overbuying, and every transaction went through the company's e-commerce platform and shipped from its warehouse. Most reps gave only one to three hours a week. "It was a community and work that they thought mattered," she said. The model was extraordinarily effective: by the time she launched, she had 200–300 sellers. At its peak, Beautycounter had 60,000 representatives and scaled to hundreds of millions in sales in eight years. "I'd stand by the decision all day long," she said. "It was an incredibly powerful business ecosystem."

01:00:13The Carlyle Deal, the Ouster, and the Emotional Aftermath

In May 2021, private equity giant Carlyle Group bought a majority stake in Beautycounter for an estimated $600 million, valuing the company at around $1 billion. Renfrew stayed on as CEO. But that summer, as the world reopened after COVID, the business stumbled. People redirected spending to travel and fashion; the sales reps were also taking vacations. "We were still growing, but we weren't growing as quickly as we had before," Renfrew said. Carlyle leadership grew uncomfortable. In October 2021, they told her they were commencing a search for a new CEO. "After I had a really good cry, I was pretty shocked," she said. They wanted her to stay as a brand ambassador, but the new CEO, Marc Rey—a French man with senior roles at L'Oréal and Shiseido—didn't value her institutional knowledge. "From the very beginning, it was clear to me that he didn't really want to leverage my institutional knowledge," she said. "He was going to run things his way." By mid-2022, she left. The following year was dark. "When you start a business and you build it for a long period of time and you're the face of that brand, you're inextricably linked to it," she said. "You don't even know who you are without it." She couldn't speak publicly because she still owned shares and didn't want to damage the company. Meanwhile, the 60,000 women who represented the brand thought she had "made a bunch of money and peaced out." She couldn't explain.

01:07:01Buying It Back, Shutting It Down, and Starting Counter

Rey was asked to resign in May 2023. Carlyle brought in an interim CEO, and Renfrew began helping behind the scenes. In January 2024, she was asked to return as CEO. "I equate this to when you finally go through a bad breakup and you finally get over someone and then they call again," she said. She was reluctant but agreed. Six weeks later, in mid-March 2024, Carlyle told her they would no longer fund the brand. The company went into foreclosure. Renfrew, as CEO, had to navigate an unfamiliar process. Then, on a Sunday night while on spring break in Miami, Bank of America approached her lawyers. The bank said they believed in her and the movement she created, and if she wanted her brand back, they'd sell it to her. She had 48 hours to decide and raise the capital. She sat with her husband and children; her younger daughter was crying, saying "you can't let this whole thing die, mom." Renfrew took "a whole bunch of our savings" and bought the assets—the brand name, formulations, inventory, marketing materials, and website—for pennies on the dollar. But there was no cash to continue operations. She had to lay off most employees without severance or health insurance. "It was horrendous," she said. She kept a tiny team, telling them she couldn't promise to pay them but hoped she could. She shut the company down on May 1, 2024, and began reimagining everything. The result is Counter, a new brand with a similar mission but a different model: brand partners are paid exclusively on their own sales, with no team-building or multi-level compensation. "Clean means nothing today," Renfrew said. "And yet to me, it means everything."

Conclusion

This episode matters because it's not a tidy success story. It's a story about what happens after the exit—when the champagne is gone, the board has lost confidence, and you have to decide whether to walk away or bet everything on a second chance. Renfrew's willingness to admit her own cockiness, her mistakes with Susie Hilfiger, and her inability to navigate the post-pandemic shift shows that even billion-dollar founders are human. The most striking moment is her description of buying back her company: 48 hours, no plan, her daughter in tears, her savings on the line. That's not a fairy tale. That's a founder who couldn't let go—and who, against all odds, got to try again.

Key takeaways

• "Growth at all costs" is dangerous when the market turns; expanding faster than you're comfortable with can leave you "out over your skis" with no way back.
• Direct sales, done responsibly, can be more cost-effective than traditional advertising because trusted personal recommendations drive customer acquisition and brand amplification.
• Being fired from your own company is an identity crisis, not just a career setback; founders often don't know who they are without the business they built.
• Private equity ownership can create pressure for short-term results that conflict with a founder's long-term vision, especially when external factors like post-pandemic shifts affect sales.
• It's possible to buy your company back out of foreclosure for pennies on the dollar, but only if you can raise capital in 48 hours and are willing to risk your personal savings.
• Rebuilding after failure requires honestly assessing what worked and what didn't, then being willing to change the model—even if it means abandoning the name you spent a decade building.
• Timing matters enormously: being too early (the wedding registry in 1997) can be as fatal as being too late, and market timing is often more important than luck.