Editor’s note: The following profile is from the 2024 Packer 25, our annual tribute to 25 leaders, innovators and agents of change across the fresh produce supply chain. (You can view all honorees here.) This feature has been edited for length and clarity.
Karin Gardner — Vice president of marketing, Oppy
What are things that led you to your career in the industry?
What led me to produce was that I needed a job, and what kept me in produce is that I loved it. I think that the career came with the opportunities to make a difference. I think I was employee No. 50 at Oppy, and now there are over 300 of us.
I’ve watched the company really grow over the years and been part of new things that have happened. When I first started, our marketing efforts were mostly on kiwifruit and apples. And now my role touches our full assortment, from greenhouse-grown vegetables to stone fruit from Chile, and we have an amazing new California grape program. The whole job grew as Oppy grew, and I just kept enjoying the challenges and enjoying the opportunities.
In terms of marketing and communications, how do the challenges today compare with 20 years ago? What makes you an effective marketer?
The fundamentals are the same. It’s about connecting with people, getting them excited about your products and your brands. But the way we do it is so different now compared to when I started.
And what’s fun about it is having a road map of the fundamentals that you as a marketing professional have confidence in and then learning from younger people coming in with new ideas and new styles of communication and an understanding of the tools and technology.
Knowing how to meet people where they are with your products is key, and it’s [done] in such a different way now than 30 years ago when I started. I’ve had the good fortune of working with a lot of smart young people coming up and contributing to the mix of marketing at Oppy.
Relative to marketing, what’s your philosophy of connecting with the trade and with consumers? How does that fit together?
I think a lot of is around authenticity. It’s easy in produce to be authentic, I think, because it’s so natural. We’ve got something beautiful that comes from the ground and finds its way to the consumer; a complicated process that we try to convey simply. It’s about helping people see why choosing an apple over a chocolate bar is important and to engage with a nice blend of authenticity and cleverness — to have some fun.
What advice would you give young people starting out in the business?
I think success comes from a blend of talent and training. As an athlete, that’s the mindset I’ve always had, and it’s helped me. Nurture your talents and hone your skills. Take care of yourself, build from your natural assets — the things that make you good at your job — and then be humble and learn. Hone your craft every day. And it’s hard, because there’s a lot of distractions and we’re busy.
If you’re training for a bike race, go on a bike ride every day, even if it’s a short one. Find time to work on yourself and work hard. Success doesn’t necessarily come easy, so there’s that need to invest in yourself and not expect it to happen overnight. It’s a long game.
What’s one industry issue that you’re passionate about? What’s an issue you think about?
This is something I don’t have a solution for, but I’ve observed and wish we could fix or change it. You probably know that produce consumption is static; it’s flat, but produce dollars are higher than ever right now.
That tells us that it’s expensive to buy a bag of grapes at the grocery store. It’s expensive for the consumer to bring delicious fresh produce home.
On the other end of the spectrum, it’s expensive to be a grower. Their costs are going up, the cost of labor, the cost of water, the cost of all the inputs.
I wish that the fresh produce community could find a way to assure its own future, to sustain itself, because I don’t know how we can continue, especially in a world where there are weather events when growers can lose their shirts in 20 minutes. I was watching coverage of the North Carolina storm situation recently on the news.
We’ve seen it happen to growers around the world more than ever now with cold weather, hot weather, freezes and storms. It’s tough to be a grower. The whole supply chain is under pressure.
As a fresh produce community, how can we work together to take more costs out of the supply chain so that our livelihoods are sustainable and there’s affordable fresh produce and a great assortment and abundance for everybody?
It is important. How do we keep ourselves going and keep feeding people fresh, safe, nutritious produce for the good of all? I don’t know how to remove more costs out of the system, but I think as a community, we could do it.
