Exclusive: Wellness Brand Thorne Hires Ex-Kate Spade CMO Mary Beech as First CGO

If those viral recipes for the magnesium-infused “Sleepy Girl Mocktail” and greens powder juices dominating your social feed haven’t made it crystal clear, supplements are having a moment.

The $35.7 billion U.S. vitamin, mineral and supplement retail market is forecast to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 2.5% from 2022 to 2027, as per Euromonitor. In this era of wellness, 38% of Americans are using a supplement daily to support their physical and mental health.

To help it claim a bigger slice of the booming market, luxury wellness brand Thorne—which sells everything from collagen capsules to at-home thyroid tests—appointed its first chief growth officer in former Kate Spade and Disney marketer Mary Beech.

Based in New York, Beech will oversee Thorne’s 20-strong marketing team and its ecommerce business.

She will spearhead all product and brand marketing, uniting data, customer sentiments and scientific rigor to grow Thorne’s direct-to-consumer, business-to-business and healthcare practitioner channels. Beech will report to Thorne CEO Colin Watts. 

“Chief marketing officers have always influenced and incited customer action, so the idea of being accountable for sales on DTC and through third-party retailers like Amazon is the natural next step,” Beech said.

The executive was most recently chief marketing and transformation officer for Scholastic, the world’s largest publisher and distributor of children’s books.  

Her pivot into wellness from luxury fashion and publishing stems from being an “avid Thorne user” for years after she had an inexplicable heart attack at age 34, Beech told ADWEEK. She added that a strong sense of brand purpose was a thread uniting each of her tenures.

“Companies should filter everything and every decision through the lens of their purpose, and their business model should reflect it, too,” she said. “To me, that was analogous with Thorne.”

Poised for growth

At over 40 years old, the Summerville, S.C.-headquartered business is not a new entrant to the market, and it already has 5 million customers.

However, Thorne is not only competing with traditional producers like Abbott for sales—it’s coming up against a plethora of fresh DTC startups such as Vitable, which just raised $16 million in funding.

In order to compete, Thorne has been rethinking its marketing. In June, it worked with creative agency BUCK to launch “Find Your Way,” an integrated campaign fronted by model Karlie Kloss that showcased its personalized offerings for people at every age and life stage.

Beech confirmed that she will build on this work, having spotted a “huge opportunity” for Thorne to build awareness and equity in an “ultra-competitive marketplace” by attracting a larger audience. She likened the challenge ahead to her experience growing Kate Spade following the exit of its founders.  

“When I joined [Kate Spade], it was coming out of a period of being a quieter brand, but it was poised for growth,” she explained.

“There, I was able to learn how when you start with a very small team, doing really strong work, you grow them to become a dominant brand in the space—whatever that space may be. So, I’m hoping I can take learnings from both Kate Spade and Scholastic and apply them here,” she added.

She also wants to increase the number of existing partnerships with the likes of Mayo Clinic and UFC, as well as hone in on the company’s science-backed products in a wellness space that often tows the line between veracity and hype.

Thorne has had CMO positions before, but never a CGO role—a title Beech describes as “chief marketing officer 2.0.”

Watts said, “Mary’s experience leveraging marketing and data into brands will come into play quite heavily as we look to connect with more customers across our channels and become the fastest-growing supplement brand.”