Thrive Market Hires Chief Merchandising Officer

E-grocer Thrive Market has welcomed April Lane as the company’s chief merchandising officer. In her new role, Lane oversees the site’s hyper-curated catalog merchandising, encompassing food, home, and health and beauty, and manages the food Safety & Quality (FSQA) team, which ensures compliance in those areas across all product categories, both branded and owned brand. She also has responsibility for owned brands, a category responsible for about 25% of Thrive Market’s revenue. 

Lane joins Los Angeles-based Thrive Market from Hearst Corp., where she was chief e-commerce officer. Before Hearst, She spent almost 12 years at Amazon, where her most recent role was general manager/director of the company’s sports and outdoors business. During her time at Amazon, Lane spent more than six years scaling the Amazon Fresh business across several functions, holding leadership roles, among them director/GM of perishable foods, private label and fresh pickup, and head of marketing and advertising. 

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“I’m thrilled to join Thrive Market on their mission to make high-quality food accessible to everyone,” noted Lane. “Like many on our leadership team, it’s a personal mission for me. After growing up on and off food stamps as a kid, I was introduced to organic, sustainably raised food in college while working as a cashier at Whole Foods. That experience changed how I eat and ultimately drove me to create the first animal welfare standards for Amazon Fresh in 2017. Joining the executive team at Thrive Market feels like an incredible opportunity to make a much larger impact in an area that I’m passionate about.” 

Prior to Amazon, she held strategy roles at Limited Brands and Nike after beginning her career at Boston Consulting Group, where she specialized in retail. Lane earned a bachelor’s degree in sociology and political science from Northwestern University. She currently lives in Seattle with her family.

Seattle-based Amazon is No. 2 on The PG 100, Progressive Grocer’s 2023 list of the top food and consumables retailers in North America. PG also named the company one of its Retailers of the Century.