The Appointment
The Vitamin Shoppe has named Kimberley Gardiner Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing and Growth Officer, effective immediately, the Secaucus, N.J.-based specialty retailer announced Monday. Gardiner reports directly to Chief Executive Officer Sharon Leite and joins the company's executive leadership team as the 640-store chain works to position itself as a more digitally connected wellness platform.
Where She Comes From
Gardiner arrives from Tractor Supply Company, where she served as Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer beginning in 2022. In that role she led marketing strategy across a network of more than 2,400 stores and guided the growth of the Neighbor's Club loyalty program to more than 40 million members. Her résumé also includes stints as Chief Marketing Officer at Volkswagen of America, as well as senior marketing roles at Mitsubishi Motors North America, Kia Motors America, and a 15-year run at Toyota Motor Sales, USA — a career arc that spans mass retail, automotive, and digital asset management.
The cross-sector background is notable for a health-and-wellness specialty retailer competing hard on both omnichannel execution and customer lifetime value. The Vitamin Shoppe's proprietary brand portfolio — including BodyTech, plnt, and True Athlete — spans vitamins, supplements, sports nutrition, and functional foods and beverages, categories where personalization and loyalty mechanics are increasingly decisive battlegrounds.
What She'll Oversee
In her new post, Gardiner will hold authority over brand strategy and creative, performance marketing, e-commerce, CRM and personalization, loyalty programs, and corporate communications. CEO Leite framed the hire as central to the company's 50th-anniversary year, which begins in 2027. "As The Vitamin Shoppe prepares to celebrate its 50th anniversary next year, we have an opportunity to build on decades of customer trust and loyalty while reimagining how we engage with the modern wellness consumer," Leite said.
Gardiner will also work alongside the merchandising team and brand partners to sharpen product storytelling and surface emerging wellness trends — a function that carries direct implications for the retailer's relationships with the supplement and functional-food suppliers that fill its shelves. For the broader health-and-wellness retail segment, the appointment signals continued investment in data-driven marketing infrastructure at a time when specialty retailers face margin pressure from mass-channel and direct-to-consumer competitors.
"I'm excited to build on that legacy and bring fresh thinking to how we tell our story and connect with consumers across retail and digital," Gardiner said, pointing to the ways consumers "discover, shop, and engage with wellness today" as the core opportunity.
Gardiner holds a Bachelor of Arts in Communication from Mills College and an MBA from Indiana University's Kelley School of Business. She serves on the National Retail Federation Marketing Executives Council. Industry observers tracking leadership moves across health-and-wellness retail and functional food and beverage categories will note that the hire reflects a broader pattern of specialty chains recruiting data-literate marketers from large-format retail to defend share against e-commerce entrants.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
