Supplements target new millennial moms

There is perhaps a latent opportunity for retailers to create a new destination center out of three existing categories that would appeal to a new millennial mom — products boosting preconception health; products supporting a pregnant woman’s health; and products supporting lactation and breast feeding following her pregnancy.

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“We see an opportunity to extend [the category],” Jamie Schapiro, CMO of Premama, told Drug Store News. “The maternity wellness market [not just supplements] is a $2.5 billion opportunity.”

According to Premama, the prenatal support vitamins and supplements space is growing year over year by 13.8%. And lactation supplements, specifically, are growing at a rate of 41.5% year over year.

There are some 4.5 million pregnancies each year, though the actual number of women who get pregnant each year approaches 6.1 million.

But that’s not for lack of trying. About 6% of married women 15 years to 44 years old are unable to get pregnant after one year of unprotected sex (infertility). And about 12% of women 15 years to 44 years old in the United States have difficulty getting pregnant (impaired fecundity).

On average, women between the ages of 15 years and 44 years old expect to have between two and three children — two of every five women expect to have at least two children — according to the National Survey of Family Growth.

And as many as 72.6% newborns are breast fed for at least three months.

Premama isn’t the only specialty supplement company targeting the maternity health space. Wellnext recently added 35+ Mom & Baby, a prenatal multivitamin for expectant mothers over 35 years old, and Prenatal & Postnatal Protein, a supplement designed to provide sustained energy from conception through nursing.

Earlier this year, Healthy mama introduced Nip the Nausea! Morning Sickness Capsules — the first OB/GYN-formulated and American Pregnancy Association-endorsed supplements to help reduce morning sickness and nausea, according to the company. The supplement contains ginger, which has the ability to neutralize stomach acids and therefore reduce morning sickness, gas and bloating, as well as aid in digestion. The supplement also contains low levels of B6. B6 deficiencies are known to increase the occurrence of headaches and nausea.

And last year Church & Dwight leveraged its First Response brand into the dietary supplement set. First Response multivitamin gummies were developed to provide women with the recommended amount of folic acid in a gummy form.