Building direct relationships with retail shoppers

The challenge

Garden of Life faced the fundamental problem plaguing consumer brands: no direct relationship with 99% of their retail shoppers. As a premium supplement brand owned by Nestlé Health Science and sold across Amazon, Walmart, Target, and specialty health stores, their retail distribution model created significant scale, but with barriers to connect with shoppers.

The team recognized they were operating blind. Customer relationships and data were controlled entirely by retail partners, leaving Garden of Life unable to identify, understand, or communicate with the people buying their products. Without direct access to purchase behavior, they struggled to drive shopper loyalty at their largest retail partners.

"We had no way to connect with our customers or understand their journey across different retailers. For a premium brand built on transparency and education, this disconnect was limiting our ability to build the authentic relationships that drive long-term loyalty in the supplement space," explains a Garden of Life team member.

Garden of Life needed a solution that would bridge the gap between their commitment to customer education and their ability to reach customers directly—while maintaining the permissioned, privacy-first approach that aligned with their premium positioning.

The solution

Garden of Life partnered with Stackline to implement Shopper OS, the industry's first multi-retailer customer relationship management and engagement system. The collaboration focused on engaging consumers within Stackline's audience to gain direct, permissioned access to motivated health and wellness shoppers.

Using Stackline's retail CRM, Garden of Life unified customer data collection across major retail channels in a privacy-compliant manner. The system provided access to customer profiles, contact information, and complete purchase history spanning Amazon, Walmart, Target, and more—creating a comprehensive view of individual customer behavior for the first time.

"The ability to connect directly with our customers while they shop across different retailers has been transformative."

The Stackline-powered Brandclub platform was critical here—connecting Garden of Life with consumers who were already engaged and willing to share data in exchange for rewards and brand experiences. This approach ensured high-quality opt-ins from genuinely interested customers rather than broad, untargeted outreach. 280,000 retail shoppers voluntarily opted-in over two years, providing first-party data and complete transaction history across all retail channels.

Stackline's messaging capabilities enabled Garden of Life to communicate directly with shoppers across – including via push notifications right to those shoppers’ mobile phones. The brand focused on educational content about supplement quality and ingredient sourcing rather than purely promotional messaging.  

This approach resonated with shoppers.  Across its messaging campaigns, Garden of Life saw a 33% open rate and 16% order conversion rate – generating more than an $11 ROI on every messaging campaign.

"The ability to connect directly with our customers while they shop across different retailers has been transformative. We can now deliver the educational, personalized experience that matches our brand values," notes the Garden of Life team.

This is what modern customer relationship management looks like—direct engagement powered by privacy-first data collection and cross-retailer intelligence.