In this Issue

We have an annual holiday tradition at DSN that helped inspire the image on our cover. As the event, a group lunch at a local Chinese restaurant, dovetails with the end of college football season, we call it the “Rice Bowl.”

The Rice Bowl concludes with each person throwing in $1, and we go around the table comparing fortune cookie messages; the one with the “best” fortune as voted by the group gets the pot.

This year I finally won. I walked away with a whopping $5.

A deal announced last month between CVS Caremark and Cardinal Health created a joint venture that the companies said would be the largest generic drug sourcing entity in the United States.

Each company will have a 50% stake in the joint venture, contributing its respective sourcing and supply chain expertise. The deal also included an extension of Cardinal Health’s existing pharmaceutical distribution agreement with CVS Caremark through June 2019.

The gummy delivery form of vitamins is the single-largest source of growth for the vitamins, minerals and supplements category, having realized a 29% rate of growth, which translates to $125 million in annualized sales growth.

(For the full category review, including sales data, click here.)

Television personality Dr. Oz may have become the Oprah of the diet-aid category with a recommendation made on one of his programs that users try raspberry ketone for weight loss.

(For the full category review, including sales data, click here.)

Nail color remains very much alive, despite rumblings that it has lost its luster.

(For the full category review, including sales data, click here.)

Women are increasingly feeling empowered to achieve “go-natural” looks or salon-level results on their own, and as more beauty mavens embrace DIY styling, brands are responding with innovation.

(For the full category review, including sales data, click here.)

Rather than take vacation for Christmas and New Year’s, the editors of DSN worked to compile a list of the top 10 trends that will shake up the business in 2014.

Administering high-touch, expensive and complex medications to patients intravenously in their homes — or in a setting other than a hospital — is essentially a large-scale bid to “reduce costs by transferring non-self-administered drugs to the most cost-effective and clinically appropriate site of care,” said pharmacist Michael Einodshofer, senior director of specialty strategy and innovation at Walgreens Specialty Pharmacy.