S10 Ep96: Ingredient Intel: Spot Harmful Chemicals in Skincare, Choose Healing Actives with Annie Jackson
“We are a beauty store, and I think there's a tremendous impact that beauty products can have on someone's self-confidence and the way they feel about themselves that day. If we can put a smile on someone's face when they walk in our door, that's incredibly rewarding to me.” —Annie Jackson
Clean beauty sounds good, but the labels are confusing and the claims are louder than the truth. We are surrounded by products that promise results without telling us what is inside. The real issue is not access, it is clarity.
Annie Jackson, co-founder of Credo Beauty, shares how her journey from legacy beauty brands to building a clean beauty standard reshaped how products are made, vetted, and trusted.
Press play to rethink what goes on our skin and why it matters:
Clean beauty standards and ingredient transparency
How to spot harmful chemicals in skincare
Why sustainability starts with packaging and sourcing
The rise of conscious consumers and Gen Z expectations
The challenge of building ethical beauty brands
What “better for you” really means in beauty
Connect with Annie:
Annie Jackson is Co-Founder & CEO of Credo Beauty, a leading clean-beauty retailer she helped launch to bring high-performance, sustainably minded indie brands into mainstream retail. A beauty industry veteran, she began her career at Estée Lauder and was a founding team member at Sephora, experiences that shaped Credo’s mission to prioritize ingredient transparency, safer formulations and sustainable packaging.
Under her leadership Credo has grown from a single Fillmore Street store to a national footprint, curating roughly 130 brands (the majority women-founded) and stewarding a rigorous Clean Standard and sustainability guidelines.
Annie is known for marrying retail expertise with a science-driven approach to product vetting and for championing accessibility and accountability in beauty.
Episode Highlights:
03:18 Credo’s Criteria for Brand Selection
05:33 The Role of GenZ in Driving Sustainability
12:29 Impact on Consumer Behavior
13:21 The Evolution of Credo’s Clean Standard
15:46 Customer Stories and Personal Impact
17:27 Credo’s Expansion Plan
Tweets:
More products, more claims, more confusion. That is the problem. In this episode, we unpack how to spot harmful ingredients and choose what actually supports our skin and health.
Hit play and rethink beauty, labels, and standards with @justine.reichmanand @credobeautyco-founder, Annie Jackson. #entrepreneurship #socialgood #inspiration #impactmatters #NextGenChef #EssentialIngredients #CleanBeautyTruth #SkincareIngredients #HealthySkin #BeautyStandards #ConsciousLiving
Inspirational Quotes:
04:02 “We look at all the different factors of creating a product, whether it's ingredient, formulation, packaging, the founder behind the brand, their focus in terms of what's important to them, all equally weighted.” — Annie Jackson
04:56 “The number one concern that we get from our guests shopping in our store is we hate all this plastic. We want less plastic, above and beyond anything else related to ingredients or anything.” — Annie Jackson
06:42 “For me, it's important to understand the founder and understand what their ethos is. If we could talk about that more and encourage people to dig a little deeper, we might have an easier time with these brands as they evolve, as new things come into the market.” —Justine Reichman
13:08 “It's not easy to grow a brand. It's easy to launch a brand.” —Annie Jackson
17:50 “We are a beauty store, and I think there's a tremendous impact that beauty products can have on someone's self-confidence and the way they feel about themselves that day. If we can put a smile on someone's face when they walk in our door, that's incredibly rewarding to me.” —Annie Jackson
Transcription:
Justine Reichman Good morning and welcome to Essential Ingredients. I'm your host, Justine Reichman with me today is Annie Jackson, and she is the Co-Founder and CEO of Credo. Welcome Annie,
Annie Jackson Thank you. It's nice to be here.
Justine Reichman It's so nice to be here. So this episode of this series is a collaboration with seven by seven, and we really want to highlight sustainability, and we want to talk about it and its accessibility within the Bay Area and all all around. So I know if we go back in your journey, you started off, you know, Estee Lauder and Sephora, and then you came here. So I'd love to just get a highlight, an overview of that journey and how you came to co found Fredo.
Annie Jackson Well, let's see. I think probably the most succinct answer is, I've been in beauty since I was 19, got a great start at Estee Lauder companies, and then was recruited back home to San Francisco at this little startup no one had ever heard of called Sephora. And was so lucky to be part of that experience because we were the founding team. We had yet to open our first store, and it really became the catalyst for credo, in many ways, because what we were challenged or charged with was finding the indie brands of that time and coupled with this new fangled open cell environment, because back then, everything was in department stores under glass. And so, as a merchant, it was exhilarating to kind of track down these new brands that really haven't gotten their start anywhere. And so when we fast forward, so my co founder, unfortunately, we lost him to cancer in 2017 but he and I met at Sephora and decided the concept of Credo was entirely his vision, and we were really drawing from that experience at Sephora. You know, could we now, 10, 15, years later, find the indie brand founders of their time, and also make sure that they were focused on sustainability and good for you ingredients. And think, at the time that we opened this store, we're sitting here in Credo and packed heights on Fillmore Street. This is our very first location, and we had about 60 brands at the time, and now I have about 130. 89% of them are run and are founded by women or both, and for the most part, I'd say most of them are independently owned, and all of them have an unwavering passion for transparency and ingredients and formulation supply chain, and kind of our trailblazers in terms of their own sustainability mission.
Justine Reichman That's amazing, and it's so great to better understand what it is that Credo has, right? Because I know, the first time I came in, I was excited, because I had heard clean beauty, but I wanted to know more, and I wanted to know, maybe, how do you choose those brands? What are some of the benchmarks you use to make sure that when you're bringing in these brands, and they're indeed, that they're also better for you in transparent?
“We look at all the different factors of creating a product, whether it's ingredient, formulation, packaging, the founder behind the brand, their focus in terms of what's important to them, all equally weighted.” — Annie Jackson
Annie Jackson I think the one thing that we're always very kind of upfront about is there is so much complexity of supply chain, so we're not, I don't think we look at like all the different factors of creating a product, whether it's ingredient, formulation, packaging, behind the brand, their own focus in terms of what's important to them, equally weighted. I think it's always going to be when you have 130 brands coming together, and like this ecosystem, it's always going to be a little bit of a different angle on things. And I think that's what is so exciting and something to celebrate. You know, there you've got these very inspired people that are creating brands, if this is beauty, so they have to be efficacious and work and smell amazing, not separate all weird, but they also have to meet the consumer demand of being better for you in terms of the ingredients that they use, being really transparent about why those ingredients are in there, and probably the number one concern that we get from our guests shopping in our store is we hate all this plastic. We want less plastic, above and beyond anything else related to ingredients or anything. And so we do have what's called a sustainable packaging guideline that's part of kind of a standard that we vet brands at Credo against, and we really keep them kind of shepherding along in terms of using 50% or greater PCR packaging, or just better materials, refillable, format, that kind of thing.
Justine Reichman That's great. I mean, I think that's going to become more and more important to people too, as this conversation continues to happen.
Annie Jackson I mean, it is. And I think what's so interesting about what's happening is with our ages most of us in this age bracket have kids that are Gen Z. The Gen Z consumer is fascinating because they expect this. This is not a big kind of differentiator to them. This is the bar that they expect in products, whether we're talking about beauty or clothes or beer or cars, this is what they expect. And so it really is what the customer is demanding
“For me, it's important to understand the founder and understand what their ethos is. If we could talk about that more and encourage people to dig a little deeper, we might have an easier time with these brands as they evolve, as new things come into the market.” —Justine Reichman
Justine Reichman One question, one thing that comes up for me is I know, when I talk to a variety of founders, what I find most interesting is what's driving them. And as small businesses, they can't always achieve everything in one fell swoop. And people can often be quite judgy, this is not sustainable or why this one? or oh, I could buy a cheaper one, and it does this, but they're a bigger company. So for me, it's really important to understand the founder and understand what their ethos is, which is what you mentioned? How it played equal parts. I was excited to hear that from you, because I feel like if we could talk about that more and encourage people to dig a little deeper. We might have an easier time of it, with these brands, with other brands, as they evolve, as new things come into the market, giving people a chance - small brand, it's hard to launch a small brand.
Annie Jackson It's incredibly hard. And I think, to your point, so many of these brand founders, I mean, I'm looking around the store, Rose Marie Swift, behind RMS, Emma Lewisham behind her brand, Randy behind inaudible. I could go on and on. But I think what's so inspiring about what they've done is they are the Estee Lauders of their generation. When Estee Lauder created her brand, back then, it was really about getting beauty into the hands of women and, world class formulations. And really she understood so well as as a consumer, what she wanted, and that's what, that's what she was delivering here. It's twofold to your point. It's really that mission in terms of sustainability and and feeling like they can create products just more thoughtfully, like I think back on my career at other companies, and it's always product formulation. And product development has always been a big part of what I've done. We always talked about does it does it work in the component? Is this the color payoff that we want? Is this the formula that we're looking for? Never once did we have a discussion about, okay, well, what's in this product? And what does that mean for the product's end of life? What does that mean for potential, human health aspect?
Justine Reichman Well, yeah, exactly. Because there's all these different things in there, and we're putting them on our face or on our bodies, yeah. And I think that the conversation around better for you, while newer in the last decade, let's say, I think is really integral to the future of beauty and I'm only beauty adjacent, as I talk to everybody in beauty. But I appreciate beauty, right. So what role when you're looking at these brands, right? Did that play for you when you went from Estee Lauder to Sephora to Credo. Where was the better for you and the sustainability aspect for in the beginning to where is now. You were like, kind of the first in its of its kind.
Annie Jackson So I would say that Shashi, who is my co founder at Credo, had always really dabbled in, kind of this, this idea around natural beauty, or around like, could these products go head to head with conventional beauty products. He had a real David and Goliath complex, which I love about. So that was probably a big motivator. But I would say that when we were at Sephora, for a brief moment in time, we had a skincare library, which we had all organic skincare. It like came and went very quickly. I remember being a merchant at Sephora. I think I was about 26 years old, and a brand pitched me. I think it was and, I can't remember the name of it. It's long since gone, and they were really proud of the fact that they were organic. And I remember it makes me nauseous to think about it, but I remember saying, nobody cares. Oh, and that feels terrible. So maybe this is my work to right that wrong. But then, when Shashi was the president of Victoria's Secret beauty, which is probably the last place you'd ever expect anyone to be really diving into innovation around primarily natural ingredients. He took a subset of the brand pink. Do you remember that brand?
Justine Reichman With the clothing thing? Yes, I remember that.
Annie Jackson And created a primarily natural brand, huge failure, not surprising, wrong time, wrong demographic, but he really learned from that, and he got very inspired by that idea. And then we're both San Franciscans. We are living in San Francisco, very progressive city around recycling and just sustainability in general, even way back then that we kind of took all of those things together, our Sephora experience also, and I think we were really compelled with this, like thesis, could you find brands to fill a store that go head to head with conventional that feel the same way, like, I think we all can think back on shopping and natural food markets, and you're like, you're mentally already saying, like, I'm sacrificing product performance for buying this product that I think then I'm talking 12 years ago, everything's changed. But back then, you're like, I know this is going to smell weird, I know this is going to separate funny, but I'm going to use it because I like their values and their beliefs, and we wanted to change that. We were like, by design, not going to open in like, crunchy hippie neighborhoods. We're like, we're hitting the high streets of the US. We are going to be right next door to conventional beauty shops or across the street or what have you. And give these brands a platform. And I will say now that I think back, 12 years later, those 60 brands that we started with half of them had a lot of work to do, let's say, but it's changed. I mean, even since then, the speed of product innovation and formulation. It's like nothing I've ever seen before.
Justine Reichman Well, also now, Credo is a known entity, and so people, when they're building their products, they have a benchmark and they have something to look at and say, Okay, well, this is what I need to do in order to become part of that group, so to speak. Make it better for you. Make it less plastic, and you're really clear with what you're looking for. So as you're getting these hundreds of submissions, assuming?
“It's not easy to grow a brand. It's easy to launch a brand.”
Annie Jackson Yes, quite a bit, there's a lot of brands on the market today, which also is a little uncomfortable. I think that's not very sustainable. I think there's a lot of access to information today, so people are, you know, it's pretty easy. It's not easy to grow a brand. It's easy to launch a brand. I would say.
Justine Reichman Well, and I think that as there's all this information, it's also how do you dissect it and know what's important and what's not? When you're looking at a sustainable brand or a potential brand for this, I know you went over a little bit, but what are some of the same things that some of the community here can look for when they come in to know that it's a really good clean, transparent brand.
Annie Jackson Well, I think that's what we are creating at Credo, is they don't have to think about it. You know, we have done the work for them. And so we have something called our Credo clean standard, which is about a 30 page document, I think at this point that brands follow and live by as their North Star, and that can be anything around the packaging materials that they use, the ingredients that they don't include in their products that are pretty pervasive in beauty today. You know, following labeling guidelines ensuring that they're doing basic safety testing. I think the easiest way that I can explain our standard is much of it. I mean, it goes far beyond a typical, regulatory structure, but it covers like what we lack in a typical regulatory framework for launching products, and that's kind of any, I think, in much more simplistic way to think about it.
Justine Reichman And I also think that it's really inspiring for other people and I think it also gives you a place where people know, I can come here and they're leading this initiative they're telling us what we need to do before even the big box stores, even now.
Annie Jackson Yes. We have a really empowered customer out there feeling very good about the fact that they educate themselves and then decide what products they want to buy. And I think more than anything, that is really what Credo is all about. About is we're being we're providing information transparently in a beauty industry that's very opaque. And it is typically kind of a black box of information. And someone can use upwards of 12 products, if not more, a day. And it's just like food. So if you think about shopping for yourself or your family, you want to know what is in the product that you're about to consume. And that is really what we wanted to solve for and I think it's traditionally, a very kind of smoke and mirrors industry, and not a lot of information provided except what this is going to do for you, and we're talking about what could it potentially do to me.
Justine Reichman Right. Are there any stories that you have from customers or stories, anecdotes that you read about the impact of how changing the ingredients and being better for you have impacted people's health or skin or efficacy of the product.
Annie Jackson I would say that most of our guest journeys are when they are just learned they're expecting a baby, and they're also have potentially been undergoing a health crisis, or just generally starting to think about the beauty products that they're using that might be conventional products, and swapping those out one by one, those tend to be the three kind of normal pathways that people take. And I think the one that I most kind of it pulls up my heart strings are when people are obviously facing a health crisis, and they're like, I just started over with everything, products that I used to clean my home, personal care products the food that we eat. It's just kind of like wipe the slate clean and start over.
Justine Reichman Yeah, I could see that. And I my mom had breast cancer years ago, and she recovered, but I will say that I do remember when she was like, okay, and we had eaten organic since I was a little girl. But then it came to, I remember Whole Foods was the only one that had the makeup that was natural so we're going back a long time and there wasn't a lot of options, and they still were not very, really great, but it's a time when people really do look inward, but I'd love that to change, like, so this narrative becomes what the community is talking about, just in general. And we, you know, inspire people to make this what the future looks like.
Annie Jackson Yes, agreed.
Justine Reichman So if there was one thing that you could share about Credo and about why it's so important to you, and what you want the listeners or the viewers to hear what would that be?
Annie Jackson I think that we are a beauty store, and I think there's a tremendous impact that beauty products can have on someone's self confidence and the way they feel about themselves that day. And I think if we can just put a smile on someone's face when they walk in our door, because we have beautiful stores with inspiring brands, and we've got an incredible store staff that are makeup artists and estheticians that's incredibly rewarding to me, and that's really what we're here for
Justine Reichman And so if we look forward a few years, yeah, okay, because you've been around for 12 years, and you look forward, what's your next initiative that you hope to bring to the community?
Annie Jackson Yeah, I think we still have 15 stores in a very big nation, and so I think we're just getting started in terms of opening in more neighborhoods. So if I could fast forward, or had a crystal ball, I would say I would love to see Credo in a lot more neighborhoods in the US.
Justine Reichman Well, I'd like to see that too and just because I'm personally curious with regards to how these brands are evolving, and your Credo, your 30 page Credo, if you will, how do you see that evolving over the next few years to impact how people are innovating?
Annie Jackson We have a science team, which we're pretty proud to have. We work with an external council of advisors anywhere from chemist to scientists to academics that all weigh in on our standard. In reality, though, we revise it or change it fairly seldom. I mean, we do have updates every year for different, you know, aspects of the business and kind of how the space is growing. I think we're also very cognizant of the fact that we've got a bunch of brands here creating products, and you can't keep changing the game on them and expect them to change with you. That's also not very sustainable. So we do try to kind of keep that in consideration. But I think the space is changing quickly, and I think it's changing quickly in a really positive and optimistic way. So I think we're just excited about the future.
Justine Reichman Awesome. Thank you so much.
Annie Jackson Thank you.
Justine Reichman Thank you for welcoming me in your store.
Annie Jackson Thank you for being here.
