Shownotes
In this Omni Talk Retail episode, recorded live from NRF 2026, Mike Wier, Vice President of Store Brands at CVS, joins Anne Mezzenga and Chris Walton to discuss how CVS is rethinking private brands as a core growth engine across health, wellness, and everyday convenience.
Mike explains what it means to run store brands like a “mini CEO,” overseeing product development, sourcing, branding, and growth across a 9,000-store footprint. With most CVS customers shopping quick, mission-driven trips, the conversation focuses on how simplicity, clarity, and trust at the shelf are shaping CVS’s private brand strategy.
Looking ahead, Mike outlines his vision for CVS private brands evolving beyond the store, becoming trusted consumer brands that extend outside of CVS’s four walls and operate more like modern CPG companies.
Key Topics Covered:
- What it means to lead private brands as a “mini CEO” inside CVS
- Why CVS simplified dozens of brands into a focused brand portfolio
- How short, mission-driven trips shape private brand strategy
- Repositioning the CVS brand for health, wellness, and trust
- Packaging simplification and shelf clarity as competitive advantages
- Competing with national brands in wellness and everyday essentials
- Why CVS private brands may expand beyond CVS stores
- How private brands are becoming long-term growth platforms
Thank you to Vusion for supporting Omni Talk Retail’s NRF 2026 coverage, and thank you to our listeners for following along throughout the show.
#NRF2026 #CVS #PrivateBrands #StoreBrands #RetailStrategy #HealthAndWellness #RetailBranding #RetailInnovation #OmniTalkRetail
This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:
Podcorn - https://podcorn.com/privacy
Transcripts
Hello, everyone.
Speaker B:This is Omnitalk Retail.
Speaker B:I'm Chris Walton.
Speaker A:And I'm Anne Mazinga.
Speaker B: you live from New York at NRF: Speaker B:And joining us now is Mike Weir, the VP of Private Brands for cvs.
Speaker B:Mike, welcome to omnitalk.
Speaker C:Thanks, It's a pleasure to be here.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:And thanks to Vuzion for also sponsoring our coverage here at the show.
Speaker B: isplay, you can stop by booth: Speaker A:Mike, welcome.
Speaker A:This is your first time with us on the show.
Speaker A:It's great to meet you.
Speaker A:I'd love for you to just start by giving Chris and I and the audience a little bit of your background and kind of what you oversee.
Speaker A:What does it mean to be in charge of brands at cvs?
Speaker C:It's a tremendous opportunity for me to lead this team and be a big part of the team, but really what it means to lead store brands is I'm responsible for product development, sourcing, branding, marketing, and then ultimately, like the growth of the business.
Speaker C:So you're sort of like a mini CEO inside a big company.
Speaker B:Right?
Speaker C:That's awesome.
Speaker A:Like an entrepreneur almost.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:So, Mike, have you been to NRF before or is this your first time?
Speaker C:This is my first time.
Speaker C:It's a great show.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker B:It's interesting because we had somebody else that is overseeing private brands on our show earlier today, and it's kind of a unique thing to come to nrf, which is traditionally a tech show.
Speaker B:So what brings you here?
Speaker C:Yeah, well, you need to think about technology in all aspects of the work.
Speaker C:And I'm really thinking about how outside of the work that I did in the speech that I gave earlier today, how the technologies are evolving and how we should think about applying that to grow our brands, particularly outside of our four walls.
Speaker C:How do we show up in new forms of search?
Speaker B:It's basically table stakes for doing the job the right way.
Speaker C:It's about to be.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker A:Well, let's talk a little bit about CVS's approach to brands.
Speaker A:As Chris mentioned, we had one of your co panelists on earlier today.
Speaker A:Your panel was titled Luring Customers with Private Brands.
Speaker A:What do you think about that in the context of CVS and how are you doing that?
Speaker A:Or how are you trying to develop products on your team?
Speaker A:So that I want to come to the CVS brand versus maybe one of the others?
Speaker C:Yeah, well, I think first and foremost, let's ground ourselves on who CVS is and it's.
Speaker C:Then it can really lead into, like, how I think about the strategy for it.
Speaker C:So quick and dirty.
Speaker C:CVS is a 9,000 store, largely pharmacy chain.
Speaker C:We have about 85% of our customers live within 85% of the population lives within 10 miles of a CVS.
Speaker A:Wow.
Speaker C:And what we think about is why customers come to us.
Speaker C:It's really mission driven.
Speaker C:You might be picking up a prescription, but you also might be coming in for like a quick snack on your way to soccer practice or buy some healthier products for an acute need.
Speaker C:So that means the trip is really short six minutes.
Speaker C:Very different than another retailer.
Speaker B:Wow.
Speaker C:So we need to think about the brands in a way that helps customers drive selection and choice of shelf and make that shop really easy.
Speaker C:So we think about simplification of the packaging.
Speaker C:Fewer brands, not lots of brands, but make it really easy to know that this is like a good brand that they sell at cvs and I know that I can purchase it with confidence so that the quality is there and the right value.
Speaker C:And then really designing packaging to help them make choice at shelf, like that's.
Speaker C:Those are sort of the things that we helped guide the team on to make a strategy for it.
Speaker A:And based on what you know about the customer and what you just explained right there, like, what are some of your priorities as you think about private brand development, then.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:So it's fewer brands.
Speaker C:Not a lot of brands we have.
Speaker C:When I came into the role, we had dozens of brands.
Speaker C:We've narrowed that down.
Speaker A:Oh, wow.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker C:We've really put focus and energy on expanding a few of the brands so well market we launched 18 months ago.
Speaker C:That's our food brand that replaced Goldband and o' Bland and really modernized the look and feel of that brand.
Speaker C:That not just appeal to maybe our legacy customers, but also kind of a new group of snacking customers.
Speaker C:We just recently launched Joyword this month or last month, and that's our new seasonal brand.
Speaker C:So we had a number of different brands across every season.
Speaker C:We were getting credit for that with our customers.
Speaker C:So we created this one brand that would holistically kind of transcend across every season, the names applicable, whether it's Halloween, Christmas, and you can even say joy word in the summer.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker C:And so we have like a lineup of, you know, really good quality products that meet the needs of customers in every single season.
Speaker C:And then, you know, our biggest brand, the CVS brand, we're really kind of reinventing what that brand is and really ready to take that to the next level, a lot of which is applying the well market principles that we learned a lot about from our customers and taking that to the CVS brand, which is our biggest brand in the store.
Speaker A:Yeah, that's great.
Speaker B:So, Mike, I want to make sure I heard that right.
Speaker B:So you said dozens with an S plural.
Speaker B:Right?
Speaker C:When you started, it was dozens.
Speaker C:Yes, dozens.
Speaker B:Wow.
Speaker C:Okay.
Speaker B:All right.
Speaker B:So, wow.
Speaker B:That puts it in perspective.
Speaker B:Where do you think you're winning with those brands?
Speaker B:And where do you think you could actually still improve relative to the competition?
Speaker C:Yeah, so.
Speaker C:Well, market has been a success, and it was to replace Gold Emblem Abound and Gold Emblem.
Speaker C:And Gold Emblem abounds.
Speaker C:We had two food brands in basically 12ft of space.
Speaker C:We made that one brand and made it really shoppable, brought the product.
Speaker C:The product flavors out in a different way, elevated the products, made them a little bit more modern, and we're seeing more customers than we had in Gold Emblem and higher repeat rates.
Speaker C:So, like, those are things that are successful.
Speaker C:Yes.
Speaker C:There are opportunities to, you know, improve that assortment over time, but we're really happy with where it is.
Speaker C:And I think the other one is on the CVS brand, I think I mentioned, but we're essentially refreshing that entire brand.
Speaker C:We hadn't really touched the brand in about 10 years, and we knew that there was an opportunity to make that come to life in a different way.
Speaker C:It was sort of getting muted with how other national brands have exposed themselves on the shelf, and we need to be more competitive.
Speaker C:Okay.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker A:You mentioned other national brands.
Speaker A:You know, CVS has always been known for wellness, but we're starting to see, not just because it's January, but we're starting to see other retailers start to push into the wellness space.
Speaker A:Target just launched a new campaign recently centered around being a wellness destination.
Speaker A:How do you think about that as other players kind of start to prioritize that as an initiative?
Speaker C:So I'd say we are.
Speaker C:We have been a consumer health and.
Speaker B:Wellness destination, wellness about.
Speaker C:For decades.
Speaker C:Before this role.
Speaker C:I had the opportunity to actually lead the health wellness quadrant as a divisional merchandise manager.
Speaker C:And it's, you know, a constant thought process of what brands to bring in.
Speaker C:Are they the right time, the right inflection point for our customers in our stores, but the biggest brand in our store by far is the CVS brand.
Speaker C:And so when I think about health and wellness, I bring it right back to the CVS brand and all the things we've done to improve the branding.
Speaker C:And the innovation around that.
Speaker C:So I can talk a little bit about what we did on the branding, but we brought the brand out front and center.
Speaker C:We used to have it called CVS Health.
Speaker C:We removed that and made it just heart CVS.
Speaker C:So we took 10 character logo, which was a pretty small footprint.
Speaker C:A four character logo could actually now be bigger and louder and prouder on shelf.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker C:We elevated the quality perception of our product using better photography.
Speaker C:And then we really simplified the pack by keeping creating kind of like an internal KPI around how many characters, words can we remove from the package?
Speaker C:So that's how we think about health and wellness and then expanding the that's how we think about the brand.
Speaker C:And then from a wellness perspective, where are the adjacencies?
Speaker C:Where else can we expand to?
Speaker C:Where else can we amplify the quality perception that we have on the products?
Speaker C:We know the products are really good quality.
Speaker B:All right, so let's get you out of here on this.
Speaker B:Let's have you put your prediction hat on our final interview of today.
Speaker B:If you look out three years from now, how will the private brands at CVS be different than they are today?
Speaker C:That's a good question.
Speaker C:So I think I'm going to go down to my aspiration here.
Speaker C:So as we think about the brands, these are brands that CVS owns, we call them internally our own brands or even our brands.
Speaker C:And I think we're starting to think more and more like a CPG every day.
Speaker C:And so I think the biggest prediction I have is these brands can and will extend outside of our four walls.
Speaker B:Really?
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:So they won't be just retail, CBS retail brands.
Speaker C:They are going to be aspirationally like some of the strongest, most trusted brands in the country.
Speaker B:Wow.
Speaker B:Okay, well, you heard it here first, folks.
Speaker B:Wow, that's great news.
Speaker B:Okay, interesting stuff.
Speaker B:All right, well, thanks, Mike.
Speaker B:Thanks for joining us today at omnitalk.
Speaker B:It's been a pleasure.
Speaker B:Do you have anything else on the docket this afternoon?
Speaker C:This is my last one.
Speaker B:This is the last one.
Speaker B:All right, you can breathe easily.
Speaker B:Breathe a sigh of relief.
Speaker B:All right, well, thank you very much for joining us today.
Speaker B:Thanks to Vuzion for sponsoring our coverage on Monday.
Speaker B:Gosh, I can't even remember what day it is, Anne.
Speaker B:All Monday long.
Speaker B:We'll be back tomorrow with a few more interviews and until next time, be careful out there.