FACE TIME: LISA SCHILLING-THOMSON

BUILDING SUCCESS

Lisa Schilling-Thomson is the National Sales Manager for Halo Food Co. She is passionate about taking Aussie brands to new heights. She is also a mother of two and once dreamt of becoming an Olympic horse rider. This is her story...

I was born in Melbourne in the inner suburb of Carlton but spent most of my younger years living in rural Victoria with my single mother and three siblings.

I was in the middle with one older brother and one older sister, and a younger sister. We were very close growing up, as we lived in rural areas, on large farms with cattle, sheep, pigs, and lots of horses. It was a great environment to grow up in and we entertained ourselves and had adventures constantly. It made us highly independent – a trait that would be in my favour in later years.

When I was about 11, we moved back to Melbourne, so it was quite a shock to come from the country where I had to walk two to three miles to catch the school bus, to being in Melbourne’s suburbs.

My love of horses never waned – I started riding from about the age of five and by 12 I had my first horse. Riding was my everything, I trained six days a week and competed in showing and dressage mostly, along with some jumping – I had wanted to become an Olympian rider.

Lisa Schilling-Thomson with Benji the dog and Monty the horse

Growing up, school bored me, but I loved sports, so I competed in swimming, diving, track and field. I was one of those kids that excelled in most sports, so I was always in demand in team sports. As I got older in school I wanted to contribute more, so I became School SRC Head, School Sports Captain, and took on as many leadership roles as I could.

My first job was as a retail assistant in Target. I lied about my age to get the job, at the time I was only 13, but being from a single parent family I wanted to contribute, so I worked there throughout my school years. Working from such a young age it taught me to become mature, responsible, and to appreciate hard work and the rewards hard work can provide.

When I was 22, I took my first overseas trip to Italy. The trip was for work, so I lived and worked in Southern Italy, in the Provence of Rimini for more than a year as a Marketing Assistant to an Italian global fashion jewellery house – it was quite the experience. Since then, over the years, most of my travel has been for pleasure, around Australia and to New Zealand and the South Pacific, but trust me, having horses doesn’t allow me to leave home much.

I’d really love to see most retailers supporting many more Australian-owned and made brands and products in their stores.

These days I love working as the National Sales Manager for Halo Food Co, an Australian ASX-listed company that has been the number one health and wellness contract manufacturer in Australia for more than 20 years. I’ve been with Halo since last April, I manage our Brands Division, which includes Tonik, our own protein brand, and The Healthy Mummy, an Australian company we acquired last February.

My FMCG career started at Ferrero Australia, and I spent 10 years working with some of the most iconic brands in the world, Rocher, Kinder, Tic Tac and Nutella. Working those years with Ferrero taught me so much from account management, manufacturing, supply chain, marketing, brand management, customer service, trade marketing, and category management –all the skills and strengths I would use throughout my career.

Lisa’s passion, Tonik, an all-Australian protein brand

From Ferrero, I had a stint as the National Business Development Manager with TDG, but soon realised I loved working with brands, so I moved into the sports and diet category when I joined Crankt Protein as the Sales Director in 2016. Crankt was one of the very first Australian protein start-up companies, and it was my first experience taking a new brand to market. Today, Crankt is still a very much-loved Australian brand.

I then went on to work with Vitaco Australia, working with the Musashi and Aussie Bodies brands. I also had a time with Healthier-Tastier Foods, where I developed a new brand called Coco Pet, a range of dog and cat MCT supplement oils.

Then out of the blue one day, Danny Rotman, who recently resigned as CEO of Halo, called, and asked what I was up to, which led me to my current role.

Over almost 20 years I have worked across all channels, from grocery, independents, petrol and convenience, route, foodservice, specialty, and health. I don’t think there’s many FMCG specialists that do all channels, I fortunately can.

A career highlight that comes to mind is winning two of the Account Manager of the Year Awards with JB Metro while I was with Ferrero. The JB team are the best distributors and sales team in this country, as well all The Distributors Group members.

One of my best career highlights was when I got a Crankt Bar onto all international and domestic Jetstar inflight menus, the first protein bar to be on one. I got onto a Jetstar flight one morning, and halfway through the flight looked down the aisle, and saw at least 10 to 15 people eating one of our bars – it was a very proud moment.

Lisa, her husband Scott and daughter Lana getting into the Christmas spirit with their cat Lizzy and toy poodle Jessie

My passion is working with Australian companies that manufacture their own products – new and exciting brands –and taking them to market. So right now, I’m living my best career highlight, working with two amazing Australian brands, and taking them both to the Australian people.

Most of my spare time is spent with my daughter who is a rider with her own horse now, and training thoroughbred horses. For more than 25 years, I’ve rehabilitated, retrained and re-homed ex-racehorses off the track, another passion of mine. If I have any other spare time, it’s usually spent with my family, or trying to get to the gym.

We are a lively bunch, I have a 20-year-old son who’s almost finished his plumbing apprenticeship, a feisty 12-year-old daughter about to go into year seven, and we have three horses, two dogs, and a cat.

Looking to the future, I’d like to see Tonik as being the leading protein brand in Australia, Healthy Mummy the leading women’s supplement company in Australia, and I’d like to be sitting down having a lovely, chilled glass of Aussie Sauvignon Blanc and feeling proud of my achievements.

I’d also love to be in the position to lead and mentor women in FMCG.

What’s your advice for retailers?

I’d really love to see most retailers supporting many more Australian-owned and made brands and products in their stores. If we have learned nothing else from Covid, we should have learned that manufacturing and industry in our own country is essential, having to rely on imported products from other countries is not the position we want to be in.

What’s your advice for suppliers?

Ageism is a real thing in FMCG, particularly for women, I’ve experienced it, and many other women I know have as well. It’s fine to employ university graduates for two years, then off they go to their next role, but there’s real lifelong skills and experience in older employees, experience you can’t learn from a book or a class. You get experience, depth, maturity, and reliability from older employees, so don’t ignore them.