Creating the future best-selling slimming food supplement is an audacious challenge that brands should embrace.
The slimming segment has been for a long time among the best food supplement sellers, positioned as 4th segment among the 15 segments bringing turnover for the food supplements sold in French pharmacies (the pharmacy represents 50% of the market’s turnover). Indeed, from 2014 to 2021, slimming represented between 4% and 10%* of food supplement sales in pharmacies.
Despite those attractive figures, it is its decreasing dynamic that is singled out by the brands. Thus, for a few years, slimming has often been neglected due to its decline on the market.
Yet, numerous innovations can be developed in the field of slimming food supplements. A sizeable business volume can still be achieved in this segment.
Thus, to get to know how to invert the dynamic for your brand and to create the future best-selling slimming food supplement, it is important, as a first step, to understand the background to its decline.
- What is the reason for the sales decrease of slimming supplements in the past few years?
- Over-promising
Previously, on the market, products promising quick results might have seemed expandable, even more so as their efficacy depends, for a great extent, on individual metabolisms. This could have triggered the segment’s loss of credibility.
- Side effects
Numerous reports, widely circulated by the media, about potential side effects from some slimming food supplements, may have led some consumers to become skeptical towards them.
- The removal of some product references
Health and regulatory authorities in France and in the EU have strengthened the rules and expectations towards food supplements, particularly regarding labeling and composition. This led to the removal of some products from the market and, consequently, the decrease of sales volume.
- An over-targeted approach
Claiming thinness at all costs is not in line with today’s society.
Nowadays, trends lead us towards the end of beauty dictates and encourage us instead to seek life balance.
Therefore, curves are better accepted, and generous shapes are more sought after. Besides, being slim is not only a matter of body, but of mind too, of overall health and holistic wellbeing. In other words, mental and emotional balance is a main preoccupation, well beyond the slim aspect in itself.
So…
How to create the future best-selling slimming food supplement?
- Ensure efficacy
To our greatest satisfaction, nutraceutical ingredient suppliers work hard to offer us new actives with clinically proven efficacy, i.e. tested on a consumer panel in normalized testing conditions known as the Gold Standard (randomized, double-blind, against placebo).
Thankfully, chitosan is not the only option to avoid hunger pangs, or dandelion as a diuretic, or chrome to regulate sugar absorption in the blood… More glamourous ingredients are at hand and are, at least, as efficient.
- Take a holistic approach
As previously described, slimming is not so much a matter of body or body aesthetics anymore. Maintaining a figure involves healthy tummy and mind. They must both be part of the slimming solution offered. The slimming solution can be in the form of food supplements and can also be coupled with additional services offered by the brand.
- Communicate well
It is essential to work on your product’s market positioning. Women don’t want thinness dictates anymore.
– To this end, instead of targeting slimming, is it better to talk about skin appearance? (by helping, for example, to improve the « orange peel effect » instead of addressing cellulite).
– What about referring to desirability? (by mentioning « slender legs » for instance).
– Projecting into a lightweight sensation? (to feel « like a feather »).
– Make slimming fall back to second place and benefit from a more scalable segment thanks to bi-segment products like «anti-ageing slimming»? a « slimming libido booster »? The attributes of « mobility and lightness » ?
In conclusion, figure refining should be « fun », make sense, be part of a history without standards. If you dust off the slimming segment, your success is guaranteed.
If you are convinced of the development potential thanks to slimming food supplements, Kares-up takes over to support you with your strategy, your formulation and the manufacturing of your future best-selling slimming food supplement.
Raphaëlle DA COSTA
Founder of Kares-up
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*Source Synadiet
