C&D: Sales of multivitamins on the rebound

EWING, N.J. — Church & Dwight on Monday reported that the overall multivitamin business has rebounded from unfavorable publicity late last year with a 1% trajectory in overall growth. 

 

"The 1% overall category growth for vitamins is actually encouraging news as it represents steady improvement from a negative 2.2% category decline in the first quarter and a flat category in the second quarter," Jim Craigie, C&D chairman and CEO, told analyts Monday morning. "We are optimistic that the vitamin category will soon return to its historic mid single-digit growth levels driven by new products and solid marketing spending by all competitors that reinforce the proven benefits from taking vitamins."

 

Craigie reported that C&D's gummy vitamin niche now represents a 7% share of the total vitamin category. "That is more than double what it was when we bought the business in 2012 and that still leaves 93% of the $7 billion vitamin category to be conquered by encouraging consumers to switch from swallowing tasteless hard pills to enjoying delicious tasty gummy vitamins," he said.

 

"These strong results to date in our gummy vitamin business [has] put us on track to deliver our strongest sales growth outlook of the year despite lower than expected category growth and increased competition," he said."We have lots of very aggressive plans for vitamins going forward."