Liquid Death Expands C-Suite with Appointment of Mike Fine as Chief Retail Officer and Promotion of Marisa Bertha to Chief Strategy Officer
Liquid Death, one of the fastest-growing non-alcoholic beverage brands, has announced key appointments to its leadership team. Mike Fine has been appointed Chief Retail Officer, and Marisa Bertha has been promoted to Chief Strategy Officer. The appointments come as Liquid Death scales its retail and distributor presence to meet strong customer demand and as the company expands its product line with new innovations, such as the highly successful launch of iced tea last year.
“Liquid Death continues to win market share across multiple beverage categories by using humor and entertainment to build a massive better-for-you brand and is gaining rapid adoption across a surprisingly wide range of demographics and geographies,” said Mike Cessario, founder & CEO of Liquid Death. “There is a huge opportunity to accelerate our retail presence and market share, especially as we diversify with category-expanding products like iced tea. Mike Fine and Marisa will play key leadership roles in growing Liquid Death through our next chapter of scale on the road to building the next beverage giant.”
In Fine’s role as chief retail officer, he will lead retail expansion and distribution efforts, reporting to Cessario. He brings nearly two decades of non-alcoholic beverage industry experience to Liquid Death with expertise in retail sales, distribution and marketing. Most recently, Fine served as chief customer and marketing officer at Accelerator Active Energy. Prior to his role at Accelerator Active Energy, he served as vice president, marketing, at BODYARMOR, where he helped scale the company to more than $1 billion in revenue and also held a variety of positions at Nestle Waters, Coca Cola (Fuze and NOS) and Pepsi (SoBe).
“Very few brands have grown as fast or as big as Liquid Death has in the past few years,” said Fine. “I’m exhilarated to bring the experience I’ve lived at other high growth brands and apply proven sales and marketing know-how to advance Liquid Death’s position in the market with retailers and distributors to meet our growing customer demand.”
Bertha has been promoted to chief strategy officer after serving as senior vice president, strategy, at Liquid Death for over two years. In this capacity, she will continue her leadership in key domains, such as fundraising, investor relations and executing the company’s strategy with a focus on revenue-enhancing initiatives that combine product innovation, data and insights to bolster retail performance and overall growth. Prior to Liquid Death, Bertha was vice president, growth, at 7-Eleven where she created and oversaw emerging brands and led 7-Ventures, the company’s corporate venture arm.
Liquid Death has become a category leader as a healthy beverage platform that combines humorous marketing and a better-for-you mission. Scanned sales through the registers hit a record $303 million for the latest 52-week period ending June 2024, up 63% versus the prior year, and Liquid Death is the fastest-growing top brand across the beverage categories we serve, according to SPINS.
Iced tea, one of the Company’s newest product lines, successfully launched in 2023 and continues to deliver tremendous growth for the company. It was the No. 1 new iced tea brand launched in 2023 and the most successful of any tea brand launch in the last three years in brick-and-mortar retail. Both in 2023 and now in 2024, Liquid Death is the No. 2 best-seller in the RTD tea beverage category on Amazon as defined by total retail sales. In 2024, Liquid Death iced tea is a top 10 tea brand by sales volume in the MULO, Convenience, and Natural channels, respectively, and holds the No. 1 dollar growth rank in each channel.
Liquid Death’s entertainment-first marketing strategy focuses on creating true comedy that wins on social media and has built it into the third most followed beverage brand globally with more than 10.2 million TikTok and Instagram followers, a 48% year-over-year increase.
“We’ve built a multi-category beverage platform and are gaining significant momentum,” said Bertha. “Having been on physical retail shelves for only four years – the first two during a global pandemic – we are still in the early innings, and that’s exciting. We’ve created a strategy that complements our beloved brand by elevating our business fundamentals, providing agility for rapid innovation and enhancing our retail execution.”
