GNC China debuted its nutrition pack SKUs marketed as Vitapak three years ago.
Vitapaks, together with its cardiovascular health and kids nutrition products, now form the three major SKUs for GNC China.
Today, GNC Vitapak is also one of the market leaders in China’s daily nutrition packs category.
On e-commerce platform JD Health for instance, four out of the 10 products in the top 10 bestselling list are from GNC.
They include GNC Vitapak (multivitamins, fish oil, and milk thistle) for men 40+ and GNC Vitapak (multivitamins, fish oil, calcium, vitamin B) for women 40+ which are at the second and third place respectively.
GNC China has since expanded the Vitapak range with PRO versions said to contain premium ingredients.
Strong sales performance
At the recent Healthplex Expo held in Shanghai between June 24 and 26, the company spoke about how it has tapped on short video and interest commerce app Douyin for building consumer awareness and success of the Vitapak range.
Huang Xiao Lei, person-in-charge of GNC China strategic centre pointed out the above when presenting the topic, “Emerging trends in China health and nutrition products and GNC’s new resolve in China”.
“In 2022, GNC China launched the daily nutrition packs range, which led to a phase of explosive growth. From then onwards, GNC China has seen strong sales performance from 2022,” she said.
Much of the growth was driven by Douyin, she said.
She highlighted that the interest commerce platform has rapidly grown to become one of the top three e-commerce channels where China consumers purchase their health supplements.
Last year, 38.8% of China’s online health supplement sales came from Douyin - only behind Alibaba’s Tmall (40.3%) and ahead of JD Health (20.9%), the other leading e-commerce site in China.
Back in 2022, Douyin only accounted for 18.9% of online health supplement sales, with the majority coming from Tmall at 59.6% and JD Health at 21.4%.
Although the mobile app is known for short videos and livestreaming, Huang said the company has tapped on the “click ID (CID)” feature in identifying and acquiring new consumers.
According to TikTok, this is a tracking parameter which helps to improve advertising attribution and performance.
“This feature links advertisements to product landing pages. This means that brands would be able to track the number of sales generated by different advertisements.
“The company leadership decided to make use of this feature to search for and acquire new consumers.
“We also used this feature to find out which product category would perform well among our potential consumers, and observed that the daily nutrition pack had quickly became the number one bestseller in that category,” she said.
Meeting multiple needs of modern lifestyle
Huang said that Vitapak has been able to amass a loyal following as it could offer multiple nutrients for different health needs.
One of the emerging health concerns seen in China is the rise of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) such as high blood pressure among younger adults, she said.
A study published in the journal Blood Pressure in March this year reported that the incidence of hypertension had increased from 18.9% in 2002 to 29.6% in 2019, with the sharpest increase seen in adults aged 18 to 39 years old, where rates had tripled.
At the same time, there is a trend of consumers taking health supplements at a younger age, which is a reason why GNC China has launched Vitapak for consumers in their 20s.
“Consumers can be categorised into two groups. One group would be looking to supplement specific nutrients and needs, while the other group is looking for a more comprehensive solution.
“We adopted the approach of providing various nutrients for people in their 20s, 30s, and 40s, and putting these ingredients into a small packet.
“The idea is to address consumers’ pain point using just a small packet of product, providing them with the ease of use.”
For instance, in its GNC Women’s Vitapak PRO+, each pack contains five products for different needs - including 1) a fish oil softgel, 2) a tablet containing 56 multivitamins for antioxidative benefits, beauty, brain health support, 3) a gut probiotics capsule for gut health, 4) a milk thistle tablet for liver health, and 5) a tablet for cellular anti-ageing.
Huang said that GNC China would be developing new products such as premium plant extracts, bone and women’s health, sports nutrition and probiotics as it continued to expand its portfolio in China.
