The Analyst’s Take: Top takeaways from SupplySide East 2023

The NBJ team recently attended SupplySide East, which brought together more than 2,800 buyers and suppliers from throughout the industry. We met with industry leaders and clients, presented data and insights onstage in education and looked for trends on the show floor. Here are some of our top takeaways:

• Business rebounds—Unrelated to the springtime weather, the outlook from companies at the event was much brighter than it had been late last year. While the industry is still experiencing the flattening that NBJ predicted in the Supplement Market Economy Update—slowing to 1.7% growth in 2022—companies in general are seeing sales turn around into Q2. The normalization coming off the COVID-related boost of 2020 is still a certainty, but the market maintains a significant boost over 2019's expectations.

• Top trend of the top trends—If you’ve attended a conference education session, you know it’s a good sign when most of the audience lifts their phones to grab a picture of a slide. That was the case this year when Content and Insights Director Bill Giebler and I presented on delivery formats in the Top Trends presentation. One of the key headlines was that gummies are the top single format category, with over 20% of supplement sales now coming from a gummy format. Consumer insights show that gummies are also the top preferred format, so we don’t expect that market share to shrink, though we do expect growth in the format to level off.

• Formulations for women—When we asked exhibitors and attendees at the show what they think the next hot area of growth will be, the top response was women’s health, from pre- and postnatal health to sexual health to menopause. I noted this as a top takeaway from Natural Products Expo West as well, and it’s not a coincidence we are seeing this again, pointing to the true momentum of this category. By NBJ numbers, women’s general health is a $2.44 billion market, with menopause adding an additional $570 million, but looking at ingredient and product innovations, growth in the coming years is expected to be much stronger than in previous years.

Get more information on how the economy has affected the outlook on the supplement market in NBJ's Special Report: Supplement Market Economy Update 2023. This and other reports are available in the NBJ Store.