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Health Care Industry

Joint, women health shine in flat supplement category

Drug Store News, March 5, 2001 by Bruce Buckley

For a year or more the flat dietary supplements market has been sustained by outstanding cameo performances from product segments such as calcium, soy and especially glucosamine/chondroitin.

Their success has been based on demographic and healthcare trends including the aging of the U.S. population and the ongoing strength of supplements aimed largely at the women's health sector.

These trends have helped to offset the stomach-churning plunge in the herbal market as well as disappointments in certain single-vitamin supplements such as C and E.

Media coverage has been a two-edged sword, hyping research studies showing the merit of supplements for joint/bone deterioration, menopause and PMS, but also highlighting the risk of formerly high-flying herbals such as St. John's wort.

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Drug retailers say the category has been difficult at best. Although heartened by growth in the joint/bone and women's health segments, many wonder about finding new product categories that will give a fresh boost to the market. Retail price footballing in certain vitamin categories hasn't helped their mood either.

"Challenging" is how Stan Kahn describes the dietary supplement market.

"This category is like the fashion business," said Rite Aid's senior vice president of vitamin initiatives. "There are items and things that drive it. And when you don't have anything new or hot, you suffer. We're really squirming right now to keep our head above water -- 'we' being the industry."

But Kahn does see bright spots in glucosamine/chondroitin, calcium and the nutrition bar business, which he says has been "a great growth area," though not strictly a dietary supplement category.

An OTC category executive for a West Coast drug chain echoes these observations. "My sales [in dietary supplements] are significantly down -- in the low double digits," the retailer says, mostly because of the fall-off in herbals. "The only segment really growing is the glucosamine/chondroitin products. They are still very, very strong." The chain's nutrition bar business has also helped buoy the category. "We actually consider that part of our supplements," the retailer said.

Other supplement categories holding their own at the chain are soy and calcium products--especially Viactiv chewables--as well as the chain's base vitamin business.

And at Shopko, senior buyer Roger Grueneberg notes similar trends. "The vitamin category in total is fairly flat right now," he said. "But we're seeing about a 15 percent decline in the last 12 weeks. A lot of the decline is still coming from the herbal category," which is down about 30 percent.

Like other retailers, Grueneberg reports strong growth--22 percent-- in the bone and joint segment, as well as a 31 percent jump in the women's health category, in which he includes calcium and soy products. "It's nice growth, but on a small base," he observed. Of course, he added, "anything nowadays in this category" that adds growth is welcome.

The biggest story in supplements for retailers as well as suppliers has been the ongoing double-digit growth of the joint/bone product category. The growth has been driven partly by clinical studies showing that glucosamine alone or in combination with chondroitin actually works to promote healthy joints and reduce bone loss-- a tremendous benefit for older people, of course, but also for younger ones active in sports, who tend to put a lot of stress on joints.

The latest article, appearing in The Lancet, the prestigious British medical journal, describes researchers' long-term success in treating osteoarthritis of the knee with glucosamine sulfate. The National Institutes of Health is about to launch a large, multicenter trial involving glucosamine/chondroitin that should finally dispel any lingering doubts about the efficacy of this supplement. David Moore, director of consumer products at Nutramax, is quick to point out that the Baltimore-based supplement maker will supply the product materials used in the NIH trial.

Nutramax, a leader in the joint! bone supplement category, recently launched a liquid formulation of glucosamine/chondroitin, which he said was in answer to a request from one of the company's biggest customers, AARP Pharmacy Services. "They had requests from their patients to put it into a liquid form," he noted.

The category's rapid growth has fostered a slew of new product formulations as new competitors jostle with older ones in an increasingly crowded space. Windmill Vitamins, for example, has added GlucoSeltzer, an effervescent powdered drink mix formulation, to its Glucoflex line.

A sampling of other marketers that have created different variations on the basic theme include:

* Whitehall-Robins' launch of its Flexagen line. The caplets contain 500 mg of glucosamine hydrochloride and 400 mg of chondroitin sulfate, but also have 20 mg of vitamin C.

Health Care Industry

Joint, women health shine in flat supplement category

Drug Store News, March 5, 2001 by Bruce Buckley

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