BCBusiness
Amanda Kenny, founder and chief merchandiser at Hive Naturals, is a winner in the Rising Stars category of the 2025 Women of the Year Awards
Digital marketing often gets the lion’s share of the credit for driving sales, but Amanda Kenny at Hive Naturals knows the value of meeting customers where they’re (physically) at—shopping in retail stores.
“We are the feet on the street for brands,” Kenny explains. Hive Naturals is a food and beverage sales merchandising agency: the team builds displays and does in-store education to help brands promote their products. “I always say that we’re Switzerland because we work with the brokers, the distributors, the retailer and the brand,” she adds.
Since Kenny started Hive in B.C. in 2022, it’s grown to a team of 32 people operating in six provinces. Over 90 percent of the brands Hive works with are Canadian. “A lot of these brands, although they’re big, they don’t have the same budgets as Pepsi or Coca Cola, so we’re ensuring that they get their time and that the sales are there,” Kenny says.
Hive is quickly adding large retailers to its roster too, like Walmart and Loblaws, reaching up to 300 stores in Canada. “When people talk about Hive, they definitely talk about the ROI that we produce. But they also talk about the bright energy that we bring into retail,” she says. “We’re making money for these stores because we care. We’re going in and saying, ‘What do you need? What can we do?’ And I think that really makes a difference.”
Recently, her team built elaborate displays in Ontario for Canadian and family-owned Cedar Valley Pita Chips. “Sales went up by 565 percent with no promo in that time, like a few days,” Kenny says, adding that she regularly sees these kinds of results.
But Kenny attributes much of Hive’s success to the team. “The people that work at Hive are tenacious, and they just give it everything,” she says. Not only is Kenny proud of the group she’s brought together, she adds that it’s the people that give her purpose.
“I want to build the next generation of young men and women in this industry,” she says. Kenny hopes to continue growing Hive, move into more discount retail stores across Canada, integrate more data and AI in the work and offer mentorship and training support for her team.
“For the first two years, I was like, ‘OK, well, what if I fail and I don’t make it? What other job would I get?’ Then I remember waking up only six months ago saying, ‘Oh, this is going to work. It’s a multimillion-dollar profitable company; I’m not going to need to find another job.’ And when I thought about that, it really was [because of] the people,” Kenny says.
Discover our full list of 21 BCBusiness 2025 Women of the Year award winners here.