The Analyst’s Take: 3 takeaways from NBJ’s Supplement Business Report

Swings in overall industry growth: The now $61.1 billion supplement market went from the highest recorded growth to lowest in only two years, swinging from 14.5% in 2020 to 1.9% in 2022. However, despite this massive dip in growth, the market is resilient, surpassing NBJ’s pre-COVID projections in 2019 by nearly $2 billion. It’s already been a dynamic year, with more optimistic results in reported in the five months since NBJ reported estimated 1.2% growth in January of this year, setting the stage for an optimistic outlook.

Surprising channel dynamics: E-commerce, the strong growth story of the market for the last 15 years, has experienced a significant slowing in growth, from a record 87.3% in 2020, to a still strong 30% to a surprising 5.7% last year. Analysts across industries expected a long-lasting COVID impact of consumers choosing to shop online, when we have in fact seen them return to brick and mortar. As a key example of this, mass market rallied in 2022 as one of the only channels where growth estimates were notched up. Consumers, looking for affordable options, have turned to retail stores for lower-priced supplement options, reshaping the market's landscape.

Category wins and losses: Herbs and botanicals have also fallen from all-time high growth to an all-time low, then all the way to a 2022 decline of 1.9%, though the category is expected to bounce back to positive growth this year. The herbs and botanicals market has seen higher growth than total supplements since 2014 but, as a result of this normalization, has dropped below industry growth. The bright spot across categories is sports nutrition, which far outpaced industry growth with an opposite normalization coming out of the pandemic. The blurring lines of active lifestyle, weight management and sports nutrition are guiding the strong growth in the category, which is dominated by protein.