How to Get Your Supplement Brand Into Stores

The market is big, and it's moving

Americans spent $72.88 billion on supplements in 2025, up 5.5% from the year before, according to Nutrition Business Journal. About three in four U.S. adults take them, by the Council for Responsible Nutrition's 2024 consumer survey.

Supplements are no longer viewed as a luxury.

Erika Craft, market research analyst, Nutrition Business Journal

Where supplements sell

No single channel owns supplements. Mass retail, natural and specialty stores and e-commerce each hold about a quarter of sales. Sort the table to see the split, then read our take on each as a first channel for a new brand.

Natural and specialty stores are where we'd start most supplement brands. The buyer cares about the formula, the staff can tell a shopper why it's different, and a regional win there is proof a bigger buyer will believe.

The rules before the shelf

Buyers won't take a meeting until your paperwork is clean. The basics, as the Consumer Healthcare Products Association lays them out:

• The FDA doesn't approve supplements before they're sold. You're responsible for safety and for an accurate label.
• Every facility that makes, packs or holds your product must be registered with the FDA.
• Manufacturing has to follow the FDA's good manufacturing practice rule for supplements, final since June 25, 2007.
• A new dietary ingredient, one not sold in the U.S. before October 15, 1994, needs FDA notice at least 75 days before you sell it.
• Claims about how a product supports the body need FDA notice within 30 days of first sale, and the label must carry the disclaimer: "This statement has not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease."

Expect a good buyer to ask for proof your product contains what the label says. Have it ready before the first meeting. This is not legal advice, so have a regulatory attorney review your label before it prints.

Supplement distributors and brokers

Natural stores mostly buy through the big natural distributors, KeHE and UNFI. Getting listed with them is its own sale, and it comes with the same costs any food brand faces: distributor margin, freight allowances and promotion chargebacks. We break those down in slotting fees.

A supplement broker is rarely what a new brand needs. "Supplement broker" gets about 10 searches a month in the U.S., by DataForSEO's count. The specialists who exist want brands that already sell. A distributor listing plus someone working the store is what moves product early.

Getting noticed once you're on the shelf

Food brands win with a sample cup. Supplements mostly can't. So the work shifts to explaining the product where the shopper stands:

• Train the staff. In a natural store, the person in the aisle sells more supplements than the label does.
• Put the reason to buy at eye level: a shelf strip, a screen or a QR code to a 30-second explainer.
• Sample what can be sampled. Powders, drink mixes and gummies can go in a cup.
• Track units per store per week from the first week, not the first quarter.

That's the job Spotlight Shelf was built for. Your product sits on a merchandiser with a screen above it, in 10 or more stores for 90 days, with merchandising support and sampling. Our distribution buys the product, and you fund the marketing. Read more on our page for wellness brands.

We continue to see consumers exploring new specialty products and embrace personalized health solutions.

Jeff Ventura, SVP of Communications, Council for Responsible Nutrition

What to do next

• Get your label, facility registration and testing in order before you pitch anyone.
• Pick a first channel. For most brands that's natural and specialty retail in one region.
• Price for the whole chain: distributor margin, retailer margin, freight and promotions.
• Plan how a shopper learns why your product is different without tasting it.
• Win 10 stores, measure the reorders, then take those numbers to a bigger buyer.