Tom Forsythe, the former head of Sainsbury’s Future Brands scheme, has joined challenger tea B Corp Good & Proper Tea as its new managing director.
It’s his first full time appointment since leaving Sainsbury’s in March after a decade, following a restructure of the supermarket’s product innovation team. Having started his career as a buyer, he led Future Brands – Sainsbury’s in-house small brands incubator – since 2021, working to bring several now big-name brands to market on Sainsbury’s shelves.
Having started life selling tea to go from a van in Shoreditch in 2012, premium Good & Proper has grown to supply a number of hotels, cafés, independent shops and wholesalers. The B Corp is also stocked in Ocado.
Forsythe will work alongside founder Emilie Holmes on delivering the next stage of its growth plan.
“What Emilie has built is nothing short of amazing and I can’t wait to get stuck in and join her and the wider the team on the mission ‘to show the world how good tea can be when it’s done properly’,” Forsythe said in a post on LinkedIn.
“We have some really exciting plans and lofty ambitions over the course of the next couple of years. I’ll be sharing more about what we’re up in due course, as well as lessons learnt on the journey from big corporate life to being immersed in the world of a fast-paced challenger brand.”
Since leaving Sainsbury’s, Forsythe has worked as a freelance advisor and spent time with his family. He previously worked with Good & Proper Tea in an advisory role alongside his work at Sainsbury’s.
The Grocer revealed exclusively in March that Sainsbury’s had folded its Future Brands programme into its wider product development team as part of a restructure under its Next Level strategy.
The supermarket aims to focus its innovation efforts increasingly on developing own-label products, particularly premium lines, as it looks to go toe to toe with Tesco, and take market share from high-end Waitrose and M&S.
Despite the own-label push, Sainsbury’s director of product and innovation Claire Hughes insisted the supermarket remained committed to branded innovation. For example, the supermarket will continue with the next iteration of its Thrive programme, which supports diverse founders.
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