When Gwen Whiting sold her cleaning brand the Laundress to Unilever in 2019, it was a triumphant moment 17 years into her run as a boot-strapped founder, securing a reported $100 million exit to a giant of the Fortune Global 500.
Almost four years later, her product was recalled and taken off store shelves for nine months. Whiting now considers her decision to sell to Unilever a catastrophic mistake for her brand—and now that her non-disparagement agreement has expired, she wants to talk about it.
