Jack Gayton has been named Senior Vice President, Merchandising at The Vitamin Shoppe, the Secaucus, N.J.-based specialty retailer operating more than 640 stores nationwide. The promotion, effective immediately, places Gayton at the helm of the company's merchant and product development organization, reporting directly to CEO Sharon Leite. The move consolidates one of specialty wellness retail's most commercially sensitive roles under an executive who has spent seven years building the chain's brand partnership pipeline.
Gayton fills the seat vacated by Muriel Gonzalez, President of The Vitamin Shoppe, who is retiring after a retail career exceeding four decades. Gonzalez joined in 2020 and is credited with sharpening the company's merchant-led model — accelerating proprietary brand development and deepening relationships with national and emerging brands. Her departure marks a generational handoff at a moment when the natural/specialty channel is under mounting pressure from mass, club, and direct-to-consumer competitors aggressively expanding their supplement and sports nutrition assortments.
Gayton's Brand Track Record
Since joining The Vitamin Shoppe in 2019, Gayton has steadily expanded the chain's roster of exclusive and first-to-market launches, cultivating partnerships with high-velocity brands including Barebells, Clean Simple Eats, David Protein, GHOST, Gorilla Mind, MaryRuth's, RAW Nutrition, and Transparent Labs — names that routinely drive strong scan-data performance and outsized social engagement in the sports nutrition and supplement categories. That exclusive-brand strategy is a proven traffic driver in specialty retail, limiting cross-channel price comparison and protecting gross margin from the velocity erosion that comes with broader ACV distribution.
"My mission is to anticipate what customers will want next and bring the most compelling new ideas to market," Gayton said. "I'm excited to lead a talented group of buyers and product developers as we build differentiated assortments, strengthen our best-in-class private brands, and unlock new avenues for shared growth with our partners."
The Vitamin Shoppe's proprietary portfolio — spanning The Vitamin Shoppe, Vthrive, BodyTech, BodyTech Elite, plnt, ProBioCare, and True Athlete — is central to margin strategy. Own-brand development insulates specialty retailers from the slotting and trade-spend dynamics that govern national-brand relationships, and Gayton's stated focus on "strengthening private brands" signals continued investment in that architecture. For CPG suppliers seeking shelf presence across the chain's 640-plus doors, the leadership change is worth monitoring: new merchant leadership typically triggers planogram resets, assortment audits, and fresh partnership conversations.
New Merchandising Structure
Alongside Gayton's elevation, David DiTota has been promoted to Vice President, Divisional Merchandise Manager, reporting to Gayton. DiTota brings more than two decades of merchandising experience across national retail and technology companies and will focus on third-party assortments across high-growth wellness categories — a scope that encompasses the vitamins, minerals, and supplements (VMS) segment as well as functional foods and beverages, an area where The Vitamin Shoppe has signaled growing ambition.
For brands competing in the sports nutrition, supplement, and functional wellness aisles, The Vitamin Shoppe's merchant transition arrives at a critical inflection point. Circana and Nielsen syndicated data have consistently shown specialty-channel velocities leading mass for premium supplement SKUs, and a merchant organization laser-focused on differentiated, exclusive product can widen that gap further. Brand partners and emerging challengers alike will be watching how Gayton's team reshapes the planogram heading into 2027 reset cycles. Coverage of broader sports nutrition and supplement trends and specialty retail channel dynamics from this network provides additional context for operators tracking category shifts.
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.
