Hi there and welcome to Trendy CEO! I’m Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content material officer of Mansueto Ventures. Every week this text explores inclusive approaches to management drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages of Inc. and Quick Firm. When you acquired this text from a pal, you may signal as much as get it your self each Monday.
Gregg Renfrew is again. 4 years after the entrepreneur offered her clear skincare and cosmetics model Beautycounter to The Carlyle Group in a deal valued at $1 billion—and greater than a 12 months after she and the non-public fairness agency shut down the corporate amid falling gross sales—Renfrew right this moment is formally launching Counter, a brand new firm constructed on Beautycounter belongings she acquired from Carlyle’s lenders.
A season of studying
Counter, which has been quietly promoting merchandise on-line since June 25, shares its predecessor’s clear ethos and makes use of a few of its formulations. Renfrew additionally secured knowledge on all of Beautycounter’s clients. However Counter is an upstart in contrast with Beautycounter, which reportedly booked $400 million in annual gross sales on the time of the Carlyle acquisition. Regardless of her appreciable expertise as an entrepreneur—she beforehand cofounded a bridal registry web site purchased by Martha Stewart Residing Omnimedia—Renfrew is, in some ways, going again to fundamentals, specializing in profitability and listening to clients and sellers.
“I come into this right this moment with a stage of humility,” she tells Trendy CEO. “I don’t declare to have all of the solutions. I’m in a season of studying.”
Beautycounter’s demise was certainly humbling. (My Quick Firm colleague Elizabeth Segran presents an intensive recounting of the corporate’s rise and fall.) Gross sales foundered and the corporate struggled to service its debt. Efforts to revive Beautycounter, equivalent to a deal to promote its merchandise in retailer Ulta Magnificence, and modifications to management, together with the return of Renfrew as CEO in 2022, in the end couldn’t save the enterprise.
Renfrew says shopping for again the Beautycounter belongings as an alternative of beginning a brand new firm from scratch wasn’t only a method of kick-starting a enterprise. It was an emotional resolution, too. “To let the previous firm utterly go and die when it pioneered, created, and led clear magnificence—realizing that it had been a really profitable entity at one cut-off date—I didn’t need to let go of all that,” Renfrew says. She provides: “My daughter Georgie was actually bawling in entrance of me saying, ‘You’ll be able to’t simply let this factor die. Mother, you labored so laborious for therefore lengthy.’”
Second possibilities and classes realized
Renfrew isn’t the primary founder with vendor’s regret. In 2023, Ben and Nate Checketts took again management of Rhone, the attire model they began, from investor L Catterton. Sprout Prescribed drugs founder Cindy Eckert offered her firm to Valeant Prescribed drugs (now generally known as Bausch Well being Corporations Inc.) in 2015 for $1 billion, then purchased it again two years later as a result of the large didn’t make “affordable efforts” to commercialize Sprout’s feminine sexual well being drug.
At Counter, Renfrew is making use of classes realized the laborious method from the Beautycounter collapse. She isn’t the bulk shareholder, however she says she has a excessive diploma of decision-making authority. Her backers are largely people, most of whom invested together with her earlier than. The one institutional investor got here in “realizing that we have been going to do issues a bit of bit in another way,” equivalent to prioritizing profitability over development. “Profitability offers you optionality,” she says. “One of many issues I’m very conscious about is you don’t ever need to be in a state of affairs the place you’re not worthwhile. And if meaning the enterprise is barely smaller and it takes longer to develop, that’s okay, as a result of your clients then know that you just’re going to be round in 5 years.”
She’s doing teleconference conferences with clients and sellers, asking what’s working and what’s not. “I’m looking for to grasp and be taught,” she says, including that she “acknowledges that we’re right here in service of others who will afford us the chance to construct an incredible model and an incredible neighborhood.”
Counter’s success is on no account assured. The clear magnificence class Renfrew helped create is now crowded with rivals, and the demise of Beautycounter left staff, sellers—the corporate offered by its web site but additionally by so-called ambassadors who earned a fee on gross sales—and clients within the lurch. Counter might need to, effectively, counter lingering detrimental emotions. “Those that proceed to buy from us on this new firm—we owe a debt of gratitude,” Renfrew says. “We have to deal with them with the respect that they deserve.” For Renfrew, a technique of exhibiting them that respect is, this time, to construct an organization that’s constructed to final.
What’s your strategy to enterprise longevity?
When you’re a founder or work at a founder-led firm, what are the ways in which your corporation is guaranteeing its longevity? Share your insights with me at stephaniemehta@mansueto.com, and we’ll embody among the finest reader suggestions in a future e-newsletter. As a reminder, I’m soliciting nominations for Trendy CEO of the Yr through this kind. Submissions are due November 21, and we’ll share our choose—or picks—in a e-newsletter on the finish of December.
Learn and watch: entrepreneurial second acts
Cindy Eckert on shopping for again sexual well being firm Sprout Prescribed drugs
Chipotle founder Steve Ells desires to shake up eating places along with his new idea, Kernel
Mark Lore on what it takes to be a serial entrepreneur
