by Rick Polito, editor-in-chief, Nutrition Business Journal
The practitioner channel could be the most solid bet in supplements.
But for 2020, when office visits for anything short of emergency care felt like a dicey proposition, practitioner channel sales growth practically defines “steady.” In Nutrition Business Journal (NBJ) projections captured in the just-published 2025 Supplement Business Report, practitioner channel growth in 2024 is estimated at 7.8%, following 7.7% in 2023 and 7.6% in 2025. Back in 2022, when the overall industry dropped to 2%, the lowest NBJ ever tracked, practitioner sales were chugging along at 7.2%.
Steady, right?
Part of what makes this practitioner growth important to watch, despite the lack of dramatic swings, is how the growth allows the channel to grab an increasing share of the market. In 2021, as the channel emerged from lockdown, growing at 6.5%, sales accounted for 8.3% of the market. In 2024, NBJ estimates practitioner sales represented 9.2% of the market. If projections hold, it will claim 9.7% in 2028.
At that point, it would be even with multilevel marketing sales, but if we wind back to 2020, MLMs took a much higher slice of the pie with 14.3% of the pie.
Steady, it turns out, matters.
Some of what made the recent growth possible, however, would have seemed anathema to the channel’s core players not long ago. Up until the mid-2010s, “professional” brands were fighting to keep their supplements sold only through practitioners. The biggest challenge was Amazon, where practitioners were signing up as third-party sellers, a phenomenon that had brands that were loyal to the channel’s origins racing around trying to keep sales in-office.
Now every major practitioner brand sells direct-to-consumer. Brands that were anti-Amazon stalwarts now have their own Amazon stores.
That doesn’t mean practitioners selling practitioner brands have gone away. Naturopaths and other alternative-medicine healers are heavily dependent on supplement sales to keep their offices open. In NBJ’s 2023 Practitioner Report, one out of six practitioner respondents said supplement sales represented 40% or more of their revenue. Three in 10 said the sales accounted for 20% to 40% of sales.
That contingent of what are basically highly motivated and trusted brand ambassadors is key to the success of the channel. While the number of consumers who take practitioners’ advice on supplements is not a large share of all supplement consumers, they can be a very loyal group.
Loyal enough to make supplements the most solid bet in supplements..
