Free Living Co., a natural-products retailer near the Newpark Hotel in Kimball Junction, will close its storefront on Saturday, Sept. 12.

Founder Dana Grinnell said the closure is a strategic pivot, not a failure. She plans to shift her focus to Live Free Skincare, a teen and young-adult skincare line she launched in January. The store at 1476 Newpark Blvd., Suite 100, opened in April 2025, giving the brick-and-mortar about a 17-month run.

Grinnell wrote in a customer newsletter that shoppers have been walking in with sympathetic looks, assuming the worst, The Park Record reported. She said she tells each one the same thing: this was a conscious decision, and the skincare line needs her full attention.

Grinnell founded Free Living Co. in 2023 as an online marketplace that screens household and personal-care products against the Environmental Working Group's ingredient standards. She opened the Kimball Junction shop to give local customers a place to browse those vetted products in person.

The decision to close the physical store came down to bandwidth, Grinnell said. She wrote that she had to take her own advice about trimming busy work and focusing on the one objective that could drive the bulk of sales.

That objective is Live Free Skincare.

The line bills itself as the first MADE SAFE-certified skincare brand formulated for tweens, teens and young adults, according to a MADE SAFE blog post. Grinnell said she spent two years developing the products and working with the certification organization. The three-step routine is priced at $36, $39 and $42 per product, or $99 as a set.

"When my teenage daughter showed me the skincare products she believed were 'clean,' I was shocked by what I uncovered," Grinnell told MADE SAFE. "The marketing toward this age group was powerful, but the ingredient lists told a different story."

Free Living Co. will continue selling online and offering local delivery for its most popular products after the storefront closes. Through Sept. 12, the shop is running a closing clearance sale with discounts up to 40 percent off.