BEYOND GUMMIES: HOW PHARMACISTS CAN NAVIGATE THE FAST-MOVING VITAMIN MARKET
Walk into any pharmacy today and you’ll find a wall of vitamin bottles - chewables, capsules, sprays and sachets - with branding that ranges from clinical to cartoonish.
T
he vitamin and supplement market is booming. In the UK alone, it was worth £4.8 billion in 2024, with growth forecasts
predicting it will double again by 2033. Scotland is riding that wave, with consumers increasingly self-prescribing everything from vitamin D for winter blues to B-complex for fatigue, magnesium for sleep and biotin for hair growth.
At the heart of this surge are gummies - flavoured, easy-to-take chewables that now account for nearly 25% of UK vitamin sales. But gummies are only the gateway. The broader trend is toward “functional wellness”: vitamins not just for deficiency, but for optimisation, longevity, immunity and even mood.
Pharmacies now face a choice. Play passive retailer and compete with online-only shops, or step forward as the expert-led, evidence- informed hub for personalised, effective and safe supplementation: not just selling more vitamins, but selling the right ones, in the right way, to the right people.
The Online Dilemma: Cheap, Fast and Often Misleading Online-only supplement businesses - many of them powered by drop-shipping - can launch in a day. With a basic ecommerce website and a supplier, anyone can become a “wellness brand.” These platforms often offer slick branding and bold health claims; ship from low-cost manufacturers without regulatory checks; evade scrutiny under UK-specific GMP or labelling requirements; rely heavily on influencers rather than science.
Worse still, many of these supplements are overdosed, under-tested or biologically ineffective. Some contain ingredients in forms the body can’t absorb or doses so low that any benefit is purely psychological.
Pharmacists, by contrast, are regulated healthcare professionals with legal and clinical obligations. This gives us a natural competitive advantage - but only if we choose to wield it.
Five Reasons Pharmacy Is Uniquely Positioned in the Vitamin Boom
1. Clinical Governance and Trust Unlike an Instagram ad or anonymous online storefront, pharmacies are subject to regulatory
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