After four consecutive years of high, single-digit annual sales growth, the $11.4 billion vitamin and supplement industry is throttling back, only growing by four-percent last year, according to TABS Group (Shelton, CT).
The firm has been tracking industry trends for the past seven years through its annual study. The TABS Group Annual Vitamin Study was conducted among 1,000 representative respondents aged 18 to 75 from April to May. The respondents were geographically and demographically dispersed.
“The vitamin industry has many problems that still need to be worked out,” said Dr. Kurt Jetta, TABS Group CEO. “It is likely that some retailers refused to increase vitamins space because of the reduction in trade promotion investment from major manufacturers. And with no meaningful innovation on the horizon, it did not make sense to carve out more space.”
While terming the growth lethargic, TABS pointed to several important trends in this year’s report, namely that men were outdistancing women as the main buyers of the product.
Online sales tied Walmart for first place in the category and continues to be the main growth area for sales. This the first year in which online sales growth has been driven by marginal category users, many of whom purchase via the Internet. Pure play online retailers (without brick-and-mortar connections) continue to garner two-thirds of online’s $1.7 billion in vitamin sales.
For more information, visit www.tabsgroup.com.
