Isotonic beverages, sports drinks, hydration products…whatever you call them, blurring lines and new positionings are creating a fascinating CPG category. The hydration CPG category isn’t so much about invention today as it is about innovation. Invention is creating a totally new thing. Gatorade was something totally new. Today, if you want to create something that has a lasting impact on the CPG world, it needs to be combo of “new” yet “familiar.” Do something too closely related to the market leader and people won’t take notice but do something too novel and they’re confused. In the CPG industry, most successful products do not arrive out of nowhere; they’re remixes of existing ones.

As in-person trade shows come roaring back harder than Mike Tyson hitting you with an uppercut, it’s the perfect time to talk about how you can make an impact at these events without spending 10s or 100s of thousands of dollars exhibiting…

Supplement brands should be thinking about licensing opportunities more strategically. Common sense, right? Yet, many recent brand licensing deals felt more defensive than offensive business strategies. Innovation to parity isn’t going to cut it in this next phase…

Knowledge about the relationship between the gut microbiome and overall health is moving at a rapid clip. An obvious gut reaction to that is by today’s consumers looking for more foods, beverages, and supplements that support gut health. Something else that seems extremely obvious to me is that there will be this sort of flywheel effect in the coming years and decades with new gut health research emerging, which drives additional consumer demand, that feeds more categorical innovation and product development. That increased market size feeds the additional research, and we start back up again bigger and bigger. We are in the early stages of a Gut Health Revolution, is your CPG brand ready to take advantage of it?

What do I see in my crystal ball this year for the Top 5 Supplement Industry Trends in 2023? Gut Performance (purchasing Gut Health Ingredients for athletic performance), Load Up on Only What You Need (Affordability and Value-Orientated Consumer Behavior), Big Brick Poppin' (Large Retail channels winning the share of dollar sales and contribution to growth), Flex Your Brain (proactive consumption for a high achieving life), and Supplementing with Purpose (Rise of purpose-drive sports nutrition brands).

What do I see in my crystal ball this year for the Top 5 Functional Food and Beverage Trends: 3 Rs Effect (Reshoring, Regenerative Agriculture, and Recycled), Algae (Inside & Surrounding the Product), Confidentially Functional Effect (Affordability & Private Label), Mental Health (from Management to Escapism), and Old to New Technology...It's All Disruptive (Precision Fermentation & AI).

I recently had the opportunity to visit the 1st Phorm headquarters in St. Louis, MO. I've probably visited a few hundred corporate offices/facilities over the last decade of J. Schall Consulting, but none of them gave me a feeling like this one. It had an energy that was distinct, unique, and inspiringly different! 1st Phorm is successful by any traditional capitalistic metric. More importantly though, 1st Phorm is also wildly successful by a non-traditional capitalistic metric. Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “doing well is the result of doing good. That's what capitalism is all about.” At its best, capitalism is beautiful and can be the biggest positive change agent for humanity. Any company can say they have a mission, but only authentically mission-driven companies can show actual proof. The most powerful proof will come from its customers and employees. 1st Phorm has changed countless customer lives...that's super evident even with the quickest glance at social media, but what was really cool about yesterday was that I got to see the other side. Even with the highest of expectations of walking in those doors, I was blown away...

Did you know three-fourths of American adults consume caffeine daily? Whether it’s drinking a cup of coffee in the morning, turning to an energy drink midday to stay sharp at work, or mixing up a pre-workout powder before hitting the gym, caffeinated products have become an integral part of daily life. It’s that proliferation of caffeine-containing products and them being well-entrenched into the lives of most Americans that's causing the “energy everything” movement…

The cold, flu, and immunity supplement market skyrocketed in 2020, but should the pullback in 2021 and 2022 be worrisome or is the future bright for the category? The “COVID-19 Effect” undoubtedly pulled forward the demand for products a few years (which has now normalized), but this period more importantly changed consumer perception around immune health. That shift from only supporting your immune health seasonally to now making it a year-round pursuit is a big deal. Maybe the legacy immune ingredients with high consumer awareness or played out formulation approaches won’t see massive sales surges again in the near-term future and that’s OK. But it’s the massive wave of attention placed on immune health and investment put towards innovation that will open new opportunities…that’s exciting to think about and I predict it will provide strong categorical market growth.

In today’s business world, it’s hard to come up with an original thought. Once you acknowledge that, you start seeing things through a remix-filled point of view. The secret behind current innovations at CPG brands like Quest Nutrition and Snickers are that they’re rooted in remixing the past…their own past, well before most of its fans today knew about the original product offerings.

Rituals have the power to make life better. They can lead to habit creation, repeat purchases, and heightened involvement, making brand rituals a powerful strategy in any CPG entrepreneurs’ toolkit. Well-designed and popular brand-specific rituals are virtually impossible for competitors to imitate, no matter how similar or even superior their own products may be.

The supplement industry continues to change faster than Garfield can eat a tray of lasagna. Much of that can be attributed to new technologies and shifts in consumption habits. These massive disruptions dramatically accelerated ecommerce migration, which is creating both new opportunities and predicaments for supplement brands. This article will cover a handful of significant ecommerce trends that supplement brands must watch out for heading into 2023…

In a “choose your own adventure shopping” world, consumer speak with their actions (and wallets). By 2025, the Nutrition Business Journal predicts that categorical sales will be evenly distributed across e-commerce, mass, and natural/specialty retail. Whether it’s Wal-Mazon or another large retailer, it’s apparent that recent merchandising strategies shows us they want more than entry-level buyers…they want the whole category. The question remains, will being a “Wal-Mazon brand” still have some level of negative (yet always misplaced) connotation in the next 3, 5, 10 years?

Sleep matters A LOT. It’s essential to every process in the body, affecting our physical and mental functioning the next day, our ability to fight disease and develop immunity, and our metabolism and chronic disease risk. Because of that…sleep is truly an interdisciplinary aspect of our health. Yet, if I was tasked to describe in one word the current state of sleep in America, I would use lackluster.

If you mention proprietary blends (aka prop blends) in the supplement industry social media groups, you tend to get a visceral reaction. In any other CPG category, a “prop blend” is considered a highly valuable trade secret. Do you know what goes into a can of Coca-Cola? How about that Oreo cookie? And the list goes on…Those formulas are a main part of what makes them $1B CPG brands. Which side is right? Is the supplement category unique? Should “prop blends” still be around today or not in the supplement industry?

Challenges notwithstanding, frictionless omnichannel retail is here to stay. It’s more than a trend, it’s a reflection of how today’s consumers live, and brands are well advised to take this into account. Just like the Choose Your Own Adventure books, alternate paths to the shopping journey speaks to the desire of control that consumers seek. Choice will become more important in an age of personalization. The future will be rich with personalized products, endless customer service options, 1-to-1 marketing, and loyalty programs that make us feel like special snowflakes. For all that, I guess we can thank Edward Packard.

It’s irrefutable that “COVID-19 Effect” headwinds/tailwinds changed almost everything about the supplement industry. With markets evolving quickly because of elevated consumer interest in the space…it positions the supplement industry as a key gateway into the $1.5 trillion global wellness market. This increased market growth is also bringing additional commercialization activity to an already ultra-competitive space. The fact is that brands must stay ahead of the curve by identifying specific trends earlier and being more aggressive in their actions to fill demand. My intent for this content is to provide supplement industry professionals with a snapshot of what benefitted, evolved, paused, and was damaged by most powerful “COVID-19 Effect” headwinds/tailwinds. These insights will surround the following marketplace variables; product Categories/Attributes, Business Strategies, and Shifts in Consumer Behavior.

Should the advice “better safe than sorry” be universally applied in business? I consistently mention strategies that increase safety, such as financial buffering, stress testing your business model, and building operational resiliency, but what about brand positioning? Despite this trying economic environment, some CPG brands continue to thrive. These top-performing CPG brands work tirelessly to understand their core consumers. Additionally, they identify what those consumers want, where, when, why, and how they want it. Fact is, the CPG industry is bursting with growth opportunities for unique, compelling brands.

The fitness world has always been fast-changing, but did the life-altering last two plus years create additional opportunities for supplement brands to focus on endurance activity participants? More than ever, humans are beginning to realize that movement is an essential component in quality of life. In my opinion, endurance sports (regardless of the level), continue to grow as the fitness/wellness link strengthens. Sports nutrition brands will have to recognize that the market is less concerned about increased performance and more about health, longevity, immunity. Are you willing to look past the challenges caused by this market evolution and see its massive opportunities?

Competition is a central driver in business. Many see competition through a “winner takes all” lens, but that’s a mistake in the CPG industry. Instead, today’s businesses would be best served if they made friends with the competition. This article will explain the strategic concept that I’ve dubbed “brand new friends.”