After a cancer diagnosis, Hillary Peterson wanted skincare that felt luxurious without asking customers to take its safety on faith. True Botanicals made an expensive bet: put the ingredients through outside scrutiny, then put the products up against the old guard.
Three Korean American founders entered a stale aisle through Amazon, let reviews do the selling, then stretched one organic-cotton pad into a shelf-spanning cycle-care brand. The clever part is not the cotton. It is the order of operations.