Beautycounter Review 2024
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I’ll be honest, a part of me thought that this post was going to be more of an exposé about the dark side of Beautycounter. I expected to lift up the rug during this Beautycounter review and find some dirty, shameful secrets about the natural beauty company everyone in the wellness space seems to be talking about.
Spoiler alert: I didn’t discover anything horrible but I can’t say I’m drinking the kool aid either.
Maybe it’s because I’m pitched by a consultant at least once a week or because I’m just inherently skeptical about everything, but my first inclination was to think “this is too good to be true”. And in some ways it is (which I’ll get into) but I’m a firm believer that you can’t knock anything until you try it, so my 30 days of Beautycounter officially kicked off and now it’s time for my official Beautycounter Review.
Before you jump to any conclusions, this post is not a sales pitch. It’s an unbiased review of beautycounter’s products from someone who has tried their fair share of natural beauty/skincare products.
Most of the reviews I’ve read out there are from people who are brand new to this space and undoubtedly have found comfort in using beauty/skincare products that aren’t laden with hormone-disrupting chemicals…and then they become a consultant. But as someone who has two enormous cupboards stacked full of green beauty products, how does Beautycounter stack up? That’s what this post is all about.
What is Beautycounter?
But before I jump into that, let’s go back to basics and explain what Beautycounter is. Beautycounter was founded in 2013 by Gregg Renfrew in Santa Monica, California as a natural, safer alternative to conventional beauty and skincare products. They’re different than most beauty companies because of the vast array of products they sell. From makeup, to skincare to hair care they sell everything and it’s all marketed as “clean”.
Mainstream beauty products and cosmetics tend to be full of ingredients that you likely wouldn’t feel good about putting on your skin. The biggest culprits:
-Parabens: it mimics estrogen and disrupts your endocrine system
-Phthalates: a chemical used to make plastic more malleable, which also can affect your reproductive system
There are many others including talc, butylated compounds and petroleum, but let’s start slow. They’re used to both emulsify (think blending water and oil to make a moisture cream) and extend the shelf-life of your beauty products, but they actually do more harm than good.
So why are they included? Because they’re cheap and there’s very little regulation in the beauty industry. In fact no federal regulation regarding personal care products has been passed since 1938! Note: Beautycounter (along with other clean beauty brand) actually does a lot of advocacy around this issue.
Now I also want to preface this by saying a lot of the research shows correlation rather than causation. You can’t say that eating a box of Oreos everyday will cause cancer, but it’s likely that eating a box of Oreos is associated with other unhealthy behaviors that add up to future health problems.
Since I originally published this post in 2017, things have changed a lot for Beautycounter. In 2021 Renfrew and the founder-led team sold their majority stake to Carlyle Group, a Washington DC based investment group.
Where to Buy Beautycounter?
When I initially published this article in 2017, Beautycounter exclusively sold through a Multilevel Marketing (MLM) model and you couldn’t buy through stores or direct to consumer. Things have changed a lot and Beautycounter is now available at Sephora and without having to purchase through a consultant. This is undoubtedly a good thing, but I cannot forget that they used MLM to prop up their brand’s mission then undermined their free marketing to sell direct to consumers.
Let’s chat about Beautycounter being an MLM….
When a company uses an MLM model, they sell their products through consultants or “independent sellers” and each consultant has a mentor so with each sale of a product (through link cookies), that consultant makes a commission and their mentor, and their mentor’s mentor etc… make a commission.
So unlike the products I buy from Credo Beauty (my favorite clean beauty store), which normally specialize in a couple of products within either the skincare or beauty world, Beauty counter brands all of their products across categories and everything is purchased through a consultant. Truthfully it becomes hard to tell if the business is more about clean beauty or recruiting sales consultants to your team. More thoughts on MLMs below.
But like I said, you can now purchase Beautycounter from Sephora and on their website while they also sell through their MLM model.
Why Did I Decide To Try Beautycounter?
Honestly, it comes down to pure and simple curiosity. I’ve just been hearing so much about it. Like I said, I hear from at least one consultant a week (in 2023 this number has since increased to once a day!) asking me to join their team. While I appreciate the thoughtfulness, it’s just never been something I was into. But then a lot of my friends started joining and it got me thinking, there must be more to this than meets the eye so I decided to inquire more.
After years of struggling with acne, I discovered the world of clean beauty brands. Through years of experimentation I started to share some of these safer products and have been on a collective mission to share some of my skin care and makeup favorites free of harmful ingredients.
I now have the Green Beauty Shop where I share the products I’m loving and my YouTube channel where I review clean beauty products. It’s safe to say I have some experience in this area. I wanted to see how Beautycounter would hold up to some of my favorite clean beauty brands. Put simply: I wanted an unbiased Beautycounter review from someone who isn’t a consultant and actually knows what they’re talking about.
Besides my thoughts on each individual product (everything from lipsticks, toner, skin tint to dew skin to vitamin c serum), I did appreciate the packaging and delivery of the products. I definitely don’t need beautiful packaging, and there’s nothing I hate more than excessive packaging, but I do want to receive products in tact and well organized. I’ve had products from other companies show up exploded or broken and especially for a beauty company, I do expect a step-up from Amazon Prime #justbeinghonest
But let’s chat some pros and cons and my initial thoughts after 30 days of Beautycounter.
Is Beautycounter Worth It?
Like I said, I wasn’t expecting to find any pros, but honestly was surprised by the things I discovered!
1) They are great for someone who is new to green beauty/skincare – As someone who is well versed in this space and also loves experimenting with new products, this isn’t a priority for me, but for someone who is brand new, it is nice that there is a single company you can get all of your beauty, skincare and hair care products from.
2) Their product selection is vast – It’s awesome that you can basically get all of your products at the click of the button and in the mail. They pretty much have everything so it’s a one-stop-shop for anyone who doesn’t enjoy shopping for beauty and skincare products.
3) Their products are pretty good quality – I definitely don’t love all of their products, but there were some that I really enjoyed. Overall I’d say they are decent quality albeit very expensive.
4) They actually care about cleaner products – They go beyond just offering more natural products to consumers. They’re actually lobbying in Washington to get certain ingredients banned from our conventional skincare/beauty products and are trying to increase regulation.