Brandistry Buzz - Show Notes Episode: P&G Picked Up Thorne - It Needs to Handle With Care Full Description Friday morning, David Keegan texted me about the Thorne acquisition. At that exact moment I was on a call with Kaitlin O'Brien, who was telling me the same thing. She had no idea Dave was texting. And earlier that morning I'd already read posts about the deal from Tuan Tu, who writes about beauty, and Gianna De Caro, who writes about better-for-you food. Neither of them covers supplements. Four signals, four corners of the CPG world, inside twenty-four hours. So I pivoted this week's episode. In this episode, I get into what P&G actually bought for three point eight billion dollars, and why loyal Thorne customers announced they were done before a single thing about the product changed. I go back to 2010, when P&G bought a natural pet food brand sold through veterinarians and gotaccused of cheapening it - for a reason almost nobody expects. I make the case that supplements have more in common with anti-aging skincare and toilet paper than with the medicine aisle, which is exactly why P&G may be the rightowner. And I close on the reservation I can't shake: the same discipline that makes a big company a good steward is the thing that may cap the growth this price demands. In This Episode Key Takeaways 1. Trust gets repriced on news, not on product. Nothing about Thorne changed on August 4. The formulations, the certifications, the facility - all identical. The trust moved anyway, which tells you where it was actually sitting. 2. If a certification is carrying more trust than the brand, that's a fragile place to be. Certifications are evidence. They aren't the reason. Gianna's point, and it applies well beyond supplements. 3. Consumers punish the name they recognize, not the risk they should worry about. A private equity firm with a three-to-five year exit clock bought Thorne in 2023 and nobody flinched. A buyer who intends to hold for decades triggered the backlash. 4. Big acquirers often raise the standard, not lower it. They live in the cross hairs of regulators, advocacy groups, and tort lawyers. Sometimes the label change that reads as cheapening is the label becoming true. 5. Selling relief and selling belief are different jobs. Symptom relief gives you a verdict within the hour. Supplements ask for behavior change today against a benefit you may never directly notice. That's a skincare problem, not a medicine problem. 6. Distinctiveness is what sets the price. Science-led brands clear 5x sales. Mainstream supplement portfolios sit near 3x. The gap is what forty years of practitioner relationships is worth. 7. The discipline that makes a good steward can cap the growth. Winning in supplements is tied to a willingness to operate in the gray space around claims. Large companies take less risk there, for good reason. Mentioned in This Episode People: David Keegan, Kaitlin O'Brien, Tuan Tu, Gianna De Caro, Frederic Fernandez, Shailesh Jejurikar Companies and brands: Thorne, Procter & Gamble, L Catterton, Natura Pet Products (Innova,EVO, California Natural, Karma), Haleon, Unilever, Dollar Shave Club, Nestlé,Clorox, Doctor's Best, Centrum, Advil, Dulcolax, Allegra, Snapple Concepts: NSF Certified for Sport, chain-of-custody manufacturing, thepractitioner channel, revenue multiples in VMS, the READY framework A Line Worth Remembering "Thorne's certifications didn't change. The trust did." Listen & Read More Read the full article: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/pg-picked-up-thorne-now-must-handle-care-nate-challen-lbmrc Brandistry Buzz is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.Subscribe to the newsletter on LinkedIn and Substack. Next week: Nike, and the balance between conviction and humility.
