Gathering for the Business Leader Forum series hosted by NutraIngredients+, heads of operation from Pharmavite, Nature’s Way and Thorne offered a candid look at the operational, regulatory and technological pressures reshaping the industry.
Discussions centered on tariffs, sourcing volatility, talent retention, omnichannel complexity and the growing role of artificial intelligence across the value chain.
Tariffs as persistent operating reality
Panelists agreed that tariffs have shifted from episodic disruption to a structural feature of global supply chains.
Lee Tsukroff, chief financial officer and chief operating officer at Thorne, noted that trade duties are now embedded in daily sourcing decisions in a more rigorous and forward-looking planning process. Rather than chasing short‑term cost advantages that might compromise quality and consistency, Thorne has chosen to focus on long‑term supplier relationships and product integrity, even when tariff pressures rise.
“Tariffs overall are part of how we think about our business day in, day out,” he said. “They’ve clearly added some degree of cost pressure and a bit of complexity, but they haven’t hit in isolation, so I think about tariffs as part of the ever changing global supply chain.”
For Pharmavite, early tariff planning, initiated as far back as 2019, helped the company absorb more recent volatility, but Ray Gosselin, the company’s EVP, chief operations officer, said that navigating evolving tariff regimes has been disruptive, requiring constant monitoring of exemptions, classifications and geopolitical developments.
“One of the beliefs we have is that we want good health to be in reach for all, so as we get these fairly significant cost pressures, our first reaction has been to drive productivity efforts to try to mitigate and relieve as much of that financial pressure as possible,” he added. “Building on Lee’s point, the quality, the purity, the potency, the efficaciousness of the raw materials is critically important to us, so we’re not in a position or haven’t taken a position to bounce around to become transactional with our suppliers.”
Commenting on lessons learned from tariffs as persisting element of operating environments, Christine Greer, senior vice president of operations and supply chain at Nature’s Way, noted that while investments in resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic improved response times, they did not eliminate the cost of complexity.
As such, she said that Nature’s Way is entrenched and continues to rely on the strong risk mitigation muscle that it has built navigating global trade disruptions, as well as the detailed visibility it has into pricing and sourcing implications as an importer of record.
The COOs also highlighted that the knock-on supply constraints stemming from endangered shipping lane and strained energy markets not only impact ingredient availability but more discreet inputs like petrochemicals used in packaging components like bottle cap liners.
“We’re seeing some pressures and botanicals and some regionally concentrated, but the bigger shift is the geopolitical environment with a significant portion of the global energy moving through the Hormuz Strait,” Greer said. “This disruption is cascading from fuel to petrochemical into corrugated into some ingredients, so it’s no longer just an ingredient challenge. It’s a full value chain constraint.”
Balancing scale, regulation and retention
As growth in the dietary supplement category continues, the executives cited scale as both an opportunity and a risk.
Thorne’s Tsukroff identified maintaining rigorous standards, consistency and adaptability during rapid expansion as a primary focus, particularly as production volumes increase and channel complexity grows.
“At the end of the day, the risk isn’t growth on its own, it’s about maintaining control of the business line of sight and the discipline that we want for the Thorne brand,” he said.
Talent development, disciplined processes, supplier relationships redundancy and proactive planning were highlighted as safeguards against operational drift, as was the need to address the challenges of an increasingly fragmented regulatory landscape.
“We’re seeing more and more patchwork-of-state regulations and things that come at us pretty fast and furiously, and they’re not all consistent so that does create a fair bit of investment and planning against those and managing any risks that they might represent,” Gosselin said, highlighting extended producer responsibility (EPR) for plastics as prime example.
Nature’s Way faces a similar balancing act between current execution and future innovation as risks and trends evolve, with Greer emphasizing the challenge of advancing new product development while maintaining rigorous quality standards and staying on top of “whac-a-mole” regulatory demands. Here, she shared that the company relies on the cross-functionality and talent of its team, as well as retaining and building the capacity of that team.
“The bigger shift is moving towards retention and capability,” she said, noting that skilled labor availability has improved. “It’s about building more productive, stable workforces and developing leaders for the future through better tools, clear standards and stronger leadership.”
Gosselin and Tsukroff also spoke to the importance of investing in both longer term development of talent and engaging in the communities in which the businesses operate.
Omnichannel complexity and AI agility
As consumer demand spans practitioner, direct‑to‑consumer, e‑commerce and retail channels, all three companies reported increasing segmentation within their supply chain operations.
Nature’s Way has invested in distribution center technologies and channel‑specific inventory positioning to meet diverse fulfillment expectations, shifting toward a more dynamic operating model. Pharmavite’s omnichannel presence has accelerated feedback loops and innovation cycles but also raised the bar for supply chain agility.
According to Gosselin, managing distinct promotional, inventory and service models across channels is now a core operational competency.
“These different channels all operate differently in terms of their supply chains, their inventory strategies, their promotional strategies so having the agility within your supply chain to cut across all those is important, and we haven’t necessarily seen that to be a significant challenge for us,” he said. “One thing that we do see is that the feedback through different channels is quite interesting. I think it has really accelerated the pace of innovation and getting better insight into consumers and what they’re looking for.”
For Thorne, channel expansion from its practitioner roots into direct‑to‑consumer and selective retail has required deliberate planning. Tsukroff described investments in automation, order fulfillment technology and demand planning capabilities to support growth while preserving brand integrity and product consistency across all channels.
In terms of how artificial intelligence is integrating itself into operations, the panelists depicted it as a fast‑emerging enabler of agility rather than a substitute for human expertise.
Beyond deploying its AI‑powered personalized wellness advisor built to translate decades of clinical knowledge directly to the consumer, Thorne is also exploring AI applications in manufacturing, equipment interaction and productivity improvement.
“We see AI across the supply chain not as a way to replace talent person by person but as a way to get insights more quickly, and I think about speed as currency, if you will, relative to the ability to use AI to get things done more quickly and the ability of AI to serve up things in a more crisp and clear way.”
Pharmavite is using AI to integrate disparate data sets—from quality and maintenance to process capability—unlocking deeper insights and supporting higher‑value decision‑making, while Nature’s Way is prioritizing practical AI use cases, including forecasting, inventory optimization, scenario planning and predictive maintenance.
As Greer noted, AI’s greatest value lies in improving the speed and quality of decisions at scale “to operate smarter, quicker and faster” while keeping human leadership firmly in place.
Business Leaders Forum 2026
The April 29 edition of the NI+ Business Leaders Forum brought together senior operational executives Ray Gosselin of Pharmavite, Christine Greer of Nature's Way and Lee Tsukroff of Thorne who discussed how dietary supplement companies can strengthen supply chains, optimize distribution and elevate e‑commerce performance amid macroeconomic pressures. Watch the full webinar on demand here.
