In this Issue

A key trend captured by the 2016 TABS Analytics Vitamin and Minerals Supplements study is the continued decline in the number of heavy buyers (those who purchased more than three types of vitamins in a year). Heavy-buyer penetration peaked at 40% in 2012, but in 2016, heavy-buyer penetration dropped to 30%.

(Click here to view the full VMS Report.)

Before you got into the association management business, you worked in government and even ran for Congress in 1980. What led you to politics, and what are one or two of the most important things that experience taught you?

I was 27 years old when I ran for Congress, so I was in my formative years. I learned that I could compete with anyone, despite my blue-collar background. However, I realized I don’t have all of the answers, and probably never will.

It probably won’t surprise anyone that I was NOT one of the hundreds of millions of people who got swept away in the whole Pokémon Go thing last summer. If you would have told me a year ago that you were looking for Pikachu, I probably would have said, “God bless you.… Now what are you looking for?”

Consumer Suzanne Lee grew up in upstate New York, but moved to Ontario many years ago. Recently, upon visiting her hometown, she stopped at a local drug store for her favorite skin care product. She was surprised to find it wasn’t sold there.

(To view the full Beauty Trends Report, click here.)

Perhaps because of their parents and grandparents, millennials are taking a shine to the use of dietary supplements as a strategy toward being healthier, according to the 2016 Consumer Survey on Dietary Supplements conducted by Ipsos Public Affairs on behalf of the Council for Responsible Nutrition. Overall, as many as 170 million U.S. adults, or 71% of the population, take dietary supplements.

There is perhaps a latent opportunity for retailers to create a new destination center out of three existing categories that would appeal to a new millennial mom — products boosting preconception health; products supporting a pregnant woman’s health; and products supporting lactation and breast feeding following her pregnancy.

(Click here to view the full VMS Report.)

The minerals/supplements category saw year-over-year growth of 8%, with the one- and two-letter vitamins up 4%. Growth was led by Quincy Bioscience followed by private label in the minerals/supplements category (see Figure 1). Prevagen led drug channel growth in minerals and supplements, which nearly doubled in sales up 87%, while IBgard’s skyrocketed 306% year over year. Larger brands that contributed with double-digit growth were Nature’s Bounty, Culturelle and Align (see Figure 2).

Beauty brands are rushing to add apps as a ploy to allow shoppers to experiment with beauty more often, while also eliminating the need for consumers to return products because of disappointment in shades. If a brand doesn’t have an app now, it probably will this year.

(To view the full Beauty Trends Report, click here.)

L’Oréal kicked off the trend two years ago with Makeup Genius, but many others have been quick on its heels.