“I’m here to tell the Planet Organic story, from beginning to end, so y’all know the whole truth”, announced Renée Elliott as she took to the stage to deliver the Sunday Keynote at last week’s Natural & Organic Products Expo.

That phrase, “the whole truth”, hinted that this would be an unvarnished account – and so it was. Because as well as plentiful life-affirming and exuberant highs, this was a story punctuated occasionally with jaw-dropping lows.  

In Spring 2023 Elliott dramatically took back control of Planet Organic, the trailblazing retail business she launched in 1995, after it collapsed into administration and was facing imminent closure.

After a year of restoring stability, sales at Planet Organic are strong and the business is on track to return to profit in 2025. “There is so much excitement and energy to take Planet forward, and we are dreaming about what might come next,” she told a standing-room only audience.

A seed is planted
But first, Elliott wanted to take us right back to the beginning, to when this “small town girl” discovered that as “quite a young child, I had a need to think for myself and not follow the crowd”. She also knew she didn’t much like being told what to do, a characteristic she would later harness to powerful effect. 

But the seed for Planet Organic was first planted when Elliott was a student at university. She majored in English but also took a course on gerontology. “At the time I thought this was the study of ageing and getting older, which it was. But it was also the study of diseases, particularly the diseases that we often succumb to in our later decades, and how those diseases are often rooted in the diets and the food we eat in our formative years. It was the beginning for me of joining together the reasons why we really are what we eat”. 

A life-changing moment came for Elliott when she read Frances Moore Lappé’s landmark book Diet For a Small Planet. “It was so shocking to me. It was about the horrors of the meat industry in the US. Reading it made become a vegetarian, because organic meat was not an option then. And it made me question notions about ‘conventional wisdom’. I started to do my own research into health and well-being and realised quickly that it is a multifaceted thing. I realised I wanted to find ways of doing things better across all aspects of life. And it set me on this alternative path that I’ve been on since.”

Be passionate about the work you do (you’ll probably being doing it for a very long time)
After graduating from university Elliott moved to England. “I was moving to England to date a guy I’d met a year before on a night bus. At that time I really didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. So I got a job on a magazine and on my first day at work a realisation came to me that I really hadn’t thought about before. That you have to work for the rest of your life. And I sat down at work on that first day and I could see the decades unfurling ahead of me. I thought, I absolutely need to work at something I feel passionate about, or I will surely curl up and die!”

“Reminded that I didn’t like being told what to do, I thought I probably should have my own company. And I was very clear that I wanted do a good thing. I wanted to lead a life of service, and give back. So I wanted to create meaningful work in this imaginary company, that I’d be working at for the rest of my life. My one life. And my attitude here is that you may believe in reincarnation, you may come back, but you’re not necessarily going to know it. So I still say, try to make sure to have a great time this time.” 

“I really got to know myself when I was working in England in my 20s – and I continue to think that Nietzsche’s ‘know thyself’ maxim is so important. I went back to America with my husband Brian – yes, I married the night bus guy – and took a course in personal development. And it confirmed these ideas I had about an alternative life and about how self-awareness is so important. 

“When I talk about knowing yourself, I mean know your strengths and play to those. Know your weaknesses too, and know how to legislate for them. And also know how to manage yourself.”

Organic epiphany
“Around this time I went into an organic supermarket in Boston and I thought, okay, now this is what I want to do. It just made so much sense to me. Here was a manifestation of the wellbeing notion I talked about earlier, where physical wellbeing is foundational for all wellbeing. And I decided that I wanted to take organic from the niche it had been in the UK into the mainstream. And my mission became to support health through community and support the Earth’s biodiversity.” 

“But I thought, how can a small town girl like me do something like this? So I just had to trust my dad, when he said ‘you can do what anyone else can’. Now I realise he was completely right, that you can do anything in life that you want to do – if you understand two things. First, the only limiting factor in your life is your thoughts. Henry Ford said  ‘whether you think you can do a thing, or if you think you can’t, either way you’re right’. I love that, because your head controls you in ways you cannot imagine. But with self-awareness, understanding yourself, understanding brain plasticity, you can change yourself and you can manage yourself. Second, talent is great, but determination wins every time. You can have an incredible talent for doing something – for playing an instrument, say – but unless you get off the sofa and do something, nothing is going to happen. I really do believe that you can do anything that you want to if you put your mind to it – it’s about grit and determination.”

Fast forward to 1995, and the opening of the first Planet Organic store in West London. Elliott readily admits that when they she was setting up the store, in Westbourne Grove, she really didn’t know want he was doing in business terms (“I hadn’t done an MBA”). She also had to work very quickly to establish her working style, which would be strongly influenced by her mother. 

“My mom was worried about how I would fare in a male dominated world. But she actually advised me to use my femininity to my advantage. This was something I naturally wanted to. But in this way my mom was giving me permission to do it. She gave me license to be myself, to create an authentic business.”

Values-led, commercially driven
Elliott describes Planet Organic’s business ethos as values-led, and commercially driven. “Sure, there are tensions between those two, and that’s OK. But together they inform the decisions we make and how we make them. 

“Values are vital because I care passionately about the Earth and I care about people’s health. I decided that we would apply these values in three ways. So, number one is our product standards. And I wanted to set the highest standards in the industry. It’s a non-negotiable. It means there are things that we will not sell. And there are things that we will definitely sell. Second is what I call aspirational values. These are important because they get us closer to where we want to be, even if we’re not 100% there at any one point in time. 

“The third way we think about values is our modus operandi, our MO. Much of this is rooted in respect, respect for the soil, respect for animals. So I wanted to apply that respect to whole supply chain – our farmers, land use, our team. Another vital part of this is trust. Respect and trust are in fact two sides of the same coin. Here, communication is so important. It’s about talking, it’s not about judgements, not about making assumptions. And I’m bringing this style of communications back into Planet organic.

“In the end, it’s also about trusting yourself, your mind, you body. Listing to the small voice – your intuition, your gut instinct, whatever you call it – when it says, do this, don’t do that. And, actually, you have all the answers. The biggest mistake I made professionally was when I didn’t listen to that voice. And I listened to my head which said, it’ll be okay. And it wasn’t.”

Comparison, a sure road to hell
Elliott says it’s important for retailers to know their competition. “Take a look at what they’re doing, see if they’re gaining an advantage. But avoid making comparisons. As my bestie, Julia, says ‘comparison is a sure road to hell’. By constantly making comparisons you will end up blocking your own journey. What makes me happy is being myself. So be yourself, and let that make you happy. It’s one thing we can all do brilliantly, and it’s our point difference.”

“What makes me happy is being myself. So be yourself, and let that make you happy. It’s one thing we can all do brilliantly, and it’s our point difference”

Self-belief and a commitment to organic and sustainability values propelled Elliott and Planet Organic to a string of industry firsts. Planet was the UK’s first organic supermarket, it opened the first organic juice bar, the first organic certified fresh meat counter, the first sustainable fish counter and was first with non-plastic corn starch carrier bags. 

Planet Organic was a commercial success story from the beginning. In the first year of trading, the business delivered sales of £1.2 million, doubling that to £2.4 million in year two, and £3.6 million in year three. “It felt fantastic. And when the going is good everything does feel great. But you will run into challenges. So how are you going to behave in those situations?”.

Very soon, Elliott would find out. Because around this time she suddenly found herself confronting an almost unthinkable challenge. “One day, my business partner said to me, ‘I think you can go now’. I thought to myself, what? This is my baby! I was shocked. Shocked that I really did not see this coming.”

And so began “a very difficult 15 months”, which ended in an 11 day High Court trial. “It was a real David and Goliath story. I was a small town girl, and he was the opposite. And I learnt four important life lessons in that process. Working backwards, these were: 

4. You don’t know what you’re made of until you face a real challenge. But you will be able to face it, and everything life throws at you, I really believe that. 

3. Anything worth having is hard work. In business, just as in life, good things are hard work.

2. Ask yourself who you want to be in the tough times. When the litigation started at Planet Organic in 1997, it wasn’t pretty. I said, I can do that, I can get down and dirty. But I thought, actually, who do I want to be? I don’t want to get done and dirty. So my motto became ‘grace and dignity at all time’. That’s because I never wanted to be ashamed about who I’d been, when it had been really hard. 

1. Be clear who is the most important person in your life. Is it your mom, your  husband, your kids? No, it’s you. It’s just like the air steward says, put your own mask on before helping others. That’s like a life lesson in one short sentence. So I prepared hard. I’ve gathered data and I studied. But I also closed ranks and really took care of myself. I was eating better than I had ever been, I’d stop drinking, I meditated, I exercised, I’ve got some good sleep. And I spent my time with people I knew I could trust at all times.

Elliott won the case in 1999. “Afterwards, I asked Brian to come in to run the business with me, because I didn’t trust anyone. And we had to bring in investors to buy out my outgoing partner. That was the beginning of a difficult 10 year journey for us.

“But we did great things, we had fun, and we got amazing press. Our media attention was always bigger than our one store. People would ring from all over the world, and ask how many units we had. And I would say, just the one store. There was a lot of energy around at the time. We opened four more stores over that 10 years. But, we were running the business with shareholders who didn’t understand Planet’s values. This wasted time and energy, and it was really unpleasant. And there was always this underlying tension. 

“So, roll on 10 years of this, and I had three kids, and the youngest was just one. I was exhausted. And then in 2009 the shareholders made Brian redundant and pushed me out of the company. It was shocking and it was painful. I didn’t know what to do, so I went to Italy for three and a half years. I was still on the Planet board, so I was coming back and forward. But by this time I think that if I wasn’t there to fight with the shareholders, they would be fighting among themselves. In 2016 I was pushed out of the business completely. And to my mind this was the beginning of a period when Planet went into decline.”

At this point Elliott started a second business, working as a business mentor and teaching business strategy, applying what she’d learnt at Planet Organic. In December 2020, after “doing this happily for about seven years”, she heard about ambitious fundraising efforts at Planet Organic and a lot of industry and media noise about the company’s plans to accelerate expansion (in April 2022, Planet announced that it was aiming for 50 outlets by 2025). But within just a few months something clearly had gone badly wrong. “In March 2023 the CEO of Planet phoned me up and told me ‘I’m giving you half an hour’s notice, we’re going into administration’. And I thought, what? I had no idea what was going on, or happening. And then he added, ‘if we don’t get a buyer in two or three weeks, the business is going under’. 

“Brian and I I looked at each other and said, should we step in? And that was the decision we made. To join the fray, to bid for Planet”

Here begins the rollercoaster
Media and industry speculation about Planet Organic was rife. Companies were reportedly bidding for the brand, or some shops, or part of the business. “Brian and I looked at each other and said, should we step in? And that was the decision we made. To join the fray, to bid for Planet. This was a year ago. To endeavour to build a brighter future, for us, for the company, for the team, our suppliers, our farmers, communities, the Earth. So with a small amount of money from us, we called on old friends and managed to raise the rest of the money. Happily, we were successful. At the last minute on the last day, the administrator called us. I put the phone on speaker, and he said to us ‘we’ve accepted your bid’. We looked at each other and said, here we go. Here begins the rollercoaster.”

On April 25, Elliott’s team bought Planet Organic back, acquiring the outlets, the brand, saving nine stores and the jobs of 250 people. And securing a second chance for the future of Planet Organic.

“So, I just want to put a few things straight,” said Elliott, levelling with her audience. “I never voluntarily left Planet Organic all those years ago. The underlying business is strong, we wouldn’t have bought it otherwise. Planet Organic went into administration, I believe, because of bad decisions, because of expensive mistakes, because the focus was on making money. 

“I want you to know that the previous senior managers and shareholders have gone. We are re-establishing our values, which are integrity, quality, service – and a mission, to promote health in the community and to promote the Earth’s biodiversity. To provide organic, natural, healthy products you can trust, to create a shopping experience that is friendly and engaging and informative. To conduct business in a fair, honest and responsible way – and, as I said, to respect colleagues, our customers and farmers, suppliers and advisors. So, over this year we’ve stabilised the business, sales are strong, the team is happy, the catalogue is improving. 

“The coming year will be a year of investing in the business, focusing on what we have and polishing it up. We done so much in his first year, and we feel like we have only just started. 

“I thought then, and I think now, that values-led business is good business. Life is a journey, it’s not a destination. Thank you for being part of our journey”

“There’s so much we want to do, there are so many ideas, so much excitement and energy to take planet forward. We are re-committing to organic and healthy food, revisiting our branding. Revamping our systems, reinstating our training, refreshing our stores – and we’ll be profitable next year. 

“We’re dreaming about what might come next. That might – note ‘might’ – be more stores, more countries, new services. We don’t know yet.

“This is not the first time the industry has supported us in really tough times and ensured that we are still trading today. And I am eternally grateful to all the suppliers, farmers and brands who have stuck with us over the years. We are part of a remarkable industry, where relationships matter. I started a year ago with a new vision for Planet Organic. I thought then, and I think now, that values-led business is good business. Life is a journey, it’s not a destination. Thank you for being part of our journey.”