Green Growth Brands has added another retail veteran to its team. A former executive at Victoria’s Secret and Calvin Klein, Jann Parish is joining Green Growth Brands as chief marketing officer to help the CBD-infused beauty and skincare company tap into the cultural movement surrounding cannabis and hemp.
“Really focusing on the magic of CBD and the notion that this product can be available for anyone to use is what I see there,” Parish said. “Around THC, I am most excited to see as legalization comes into play across the country how we can do that in a really interesting way.”
Parish brings to Green Growth Brands nearly 20 years of experience in fashion and retail. She joins CEO Peter Horvath, former L-Brands ($LB) and DSW ($DBI) executive, who has been leading the company backed by the Schottenstein family -- the retail royalty behind companies like American Eagle, DSW, and the merger between Albertson’s and Safeway, among other things.
“Jann is a master at positioning brands to resonate with consumers. As we scale our portfolio of brands, I am confident that under her leadership we will be differentiated from the competition. We are so pleased to welcome Jann to the team,” Horvath said in a statement.
Prior to joining Green Growth, Parish served as chief marketing officer of Victoria’s Secret for just over a year. She left before the 2018 Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show, which turned controversial after Ed Raznek, chief marketing officer of Victoria’s Secret parent company L-Brands, made disparaging comments about plus-sized and trans models.
For Parish, her time at Calvin Klein, where she worked in various roles over the course of about six years, ranked among the most remarkable of her career. She helped reinvigorate the brand through the iconic #MyCalvins campaign, which she lists among her “proudest pieces of work.” The #MyCalvins campaign encouraged people to strip down and post near-naked selfies online -- which was really unheard of at the start of the decade, Parish said. It struck a chord at a pivotal time when social media was coming of age. To date, the hashtag has been used more than 725,000 times on Instagram.
“We came to understand was there was a cultural movement that was existing around social media,” Parish said. “We are going to suss out what that looks like ... in the cannabis space too -- find it and really learn how to utilize that on behalf of the way we communicate with our consumer.”
Cannabis, with its complicated history of criminalization in the U.S., and CBD, with its therapeutic potential, offer Parish rich fodder for inspiration.
Green Growth Brands has grown rapidly since it burst onto the scene in 2018. It made headlines when it landed its CBD-infused skincare products in DSW stores across the country, then shocked the retail industry again, when it sighbed major deals with Simon Property Group ($SPG) and Brookfield Properties to put free-standing stores and kiosks in malls. The company expects to have its Seventh Sense- and Green Lily-branded products in as many as 280 stores and kiosks in malls nationwide by year’s end. Green Growth also owns cannabis businesses in Nevada and licenses in Massachusetts and Florida.
