FindArticles > Drug Store News > March 5, 2001 > Article > Print friendly
Joint, women health shine in flat supplement category
Bruce BuckleyFor 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.
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.
* Amerifit Nutrition has introduced several glucosamine/chondroitin formulations as part of its FlexAble line, including chewables and a drink mix. The line also includes a formulation that mixes glucosamine with MSM (methylsulfonylmethane) and curcumin, and a nighttime product (FlexAble PM) that adds valerian extract to the formula. David Belaga, vice president of marketing, said the new PM product is just breaking into distribution this month. "Actually, all these supplements work better at night because your body is no longer physically active," he said.
* Twinlab markets a host of glucosamine/chondroitin liquid and solid formulations under different brand names (Joint Fuel, Joint Factors, Joint Rescue, Glucosamine Fuel and MaxiLife). Some of the formulations contain minerals, vitamins and other nutritional ingredients, including zinc, manganese, vitamins C and E, selenium and tumeric.
* Rexall Sundown, which claims market leadership in the category, has added vitamins C and D plus calcium to glucosamine/chondroitin in a new Osteo-Bi-Flex Bone & Joint Care formulation.
* McNeil Consumer Healthcare has introduced Aflexa, a glucosamine-only product.
* Bayer's One-A-Day Joint Health brand uses a combination of glucosamine and vitamins C and E.
For retailers, one good aspect of the joint/bone market has been the lack of price resistance on the part of consumers. It is an OTC category with relatively high price points, yet shoppers continue to buy the products without complaint.
"I think when you can get an immediate benefit from a product, cost becomes a relatively unimportant factor," said Shopko's Grueneberg. "When you see joint care up 29 to 30 percent, it's evident that people are saying they don't mind spending $30 or $40 for a bottle because if they take it for six weeks, they're going to feel some sort of benefit. If I put out a $40 bottle of vitamin C, you can take it until you turn orange and you're not going to feel anything."
Grueneberg feels some of the responsibility for the falloff in the overall supplements market rests with manufacturers, who "sat back and enjoyed" the boom years but failed to do the research to carry the momentum forward.
"Unfortunately in this category studies take a long time to do and validate," he said, "and meanwhile we're all sitting back and saying, 'Now what do we do?"'
Multivitamins gain ground,
single-letter sales decline
Total F/D/M Food Durg
Dollar sales % Dollar sales % Dollar sales %
in 000s change in 000s change in 000s change
Adult
multivitamin $698,593 2.1% $193,646 2.6% $248,392 -4.6%
Children
multivitamin 132,108 7.0 49,224 3.1 31,085 -4.7
Vitamin A & D 30,947 -9.3 8,109 -4.9 14,454 -11.8
Vitamin B 80,722 -2.0 18,968 -1.2 36,901 -4.9
Vitamin
B-complex 85,333 -5.5 25,522 -2.5 36,900 -10.8
Vitamin C 193,391 -17.0 61,787 -13.8 76,289 -19.6
Vitamin E 314,095 -16.2 78,327 -10.9 127,343 -17.2
Mass
Dollar sales %
in 000s change
Adult
multivitamin $256,555 9.3%
Children
multivitamin 51,800 20.2
Vitamin A & D 8,384 -8.8
Vitamin B 24,854 1.9
Vitamin
B-complex 22,911 0.7
Vitamin C 55,315 16.7
Vitamin E 108,426 -18.4
Source: Information Resources Inc.
for the 52 weeks ended Jan. 7, 2001.
Joint and heart segments bolster
sales in non-herbals
Total F/D/M Food Drug
Dollar sales % Dollar sales % Dollar sales %
in 000s change in 000s change in 000s change
Acidophilus $12,155 14.5% $3,194 16.4% $5,446 8.1%
Amino acids 22,724 9.1 5,753 0.3 10,476 11.4
Glucosamine
and chondroitin 368,553 25.6 49,860 56.0 160,033 20.4
Co-enzymes
and Q-10 48,311 14.2 7,908 21.1 16,571 24.4
co-enzymes
Fish oil/ 17,379 25.0 3,012 26.4 6,835 11.9
fatty acids
Gelatin 23,480 172.3 9,317 106.9 6,033 259.7
Melatonin 26,631 -14.2 6,044 -10.4 14,167 -15.7
Mass
Dollar sales %
in 000s change
Acidophilus $3,515 23.9%
Amino acids 6,495 14.0
Glucosamine
and chondroitin 158,661 23.3
Co-enzymes
and Q-10 23,832 6.2
co-enzymes
Fish oil/ 7,532 39.3
fatty acids
Gelatin 8,129 232.6
Melatonin 6,419 -14.4
Source: Information Resources Inc. for the
52 weeks ending Jan. 7, 2001.
Herbal sales mixed across food, drug and mass; non-herbals strong
Total F/D/M Food
Dollar sales % change Dollar sales % change
in 000s in 000s
Category total-
supplements $3,298.1(B) -3.2% $806,117 -1.5%
and vitamins
Total herbal- 590.953 -15.1 140,842 -12.6
supplement
Bilberry 6,221 -3.7 1,348 -6.7
Black cohosh root 6,154 2.0 1,346 3.6
Echinaces 58,423 -20.4 18,515 -11.2
Evening primrose 8,892 -1.0 1,976 5.2
Garlic 61,212 -20.0 14,145 -18.9
Ginkgo biloba 99,084 -32.1 25,557 -26.4
Ginseng 62,516 -25.2 16,275 -22.9
Grape seed 7,867 -5.7 1,566 -2.1
Green tea 3,155 39.4 580 11.3
Kava kava 14,683 -16.2 3,851 -14.1
Milk thistle 8,912 14.6 2,092 7.2
Saw palmetto 43,851 -2.5 8,528 -2.5
Soy 41,039 115.6 9,142 139.9
St. John's Wort 55,988 -45.4 14,663 -38.1
Valerian 16,825 70.5 4,978 84.7
Drug Mass
Dollar sales % change Dollar sales % change
in 000s in 000s
Category total-
supplements $1,308.2(B) -5.9% $1,183.8(B) -1.2%
and vitamins
Total herbal- 232,012 -12.5 218,099 -19.2
supplement
Bilberry 1,965 -12.7 2,908 5.2
Black cohosh root 2,488 11.7 2,320 -7.4
Echinaces 26,301 -20.9 13,607 -29.3
Evening primrose 3,612 -15.1 3,304 16.1
Garlic 22,073 -21.9 24,994 -18.8
Ginkgo biloba 36,983 -33.4 36,544 -34.3
Ginseng 23,550 -20.8 22,691 -30.7
Grape seed 2,326 15.3 3,975 -15.8
Green tea 1,149 23.2 1,426 76.3
Kava kava 5,822 -8.3 5,010 -25.1
Milk thistle 3,435 13.1 3,385 21.5
Saw palmetto 17,349 0.7 17,974 -5.5
Soy 15,294 86.5 16,603 136.3
St. John's Wort 20,076 -45.6 21,248 -49.3
Valerian 7,267 78.7 4,580 47.3
Source: Information Resources Inc. for the 52 weeks
ended Jan. 7, 2001
COPYRIGHT 2001 Reproduced with permission of the copyright holder. Further reproduction or distribution is prohibited without permission.
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