Why GNC Slumped During The Vitamin Supplement Boom

I’m surprised they lasted this long. They’re way overpriced.

Their discounts, points, and coupons became very confusing. Someone should have fired their marketing director.

It's not like people went to GNC at all even before the pandemic.

How did they survive this long? Their stuff is overpriced and they have the same logo as GMC...

*”GNC... Mediocre supplements at inflated prices.”*

GNC and knowledgeable sales person shouldn't be said in the same sentence. Seriously.

I used to work for a GNC. They are way over priced, you got pressured to sell their over priced, inferior products to make sales goals. Also the way they advertised their products, took advantage of the uneducated consumer.

GNC didn’t want to give me a job back then. Look where we are now.

“Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan acquires GNC for $1.65 billion” Rip pensions

GNC is soooooo expensive!!! I stopped shopping there for that reason and that reason alone.

Good! Nobody wants to overpay for supplements. You get way better prices from e-commerce platforms. W for consumers.

The internet has really helped consumers identify when they are being price gouged. When you are selling to the mass market, either you have proprietary technology or you are providing value for money.

Why GNC Slumped During Vitamin Supplement Boom?
Ridiculous prices on everything
just saved you 14 minutes

They should have kept selling yogurt, honey, grains, and healthy sandwiches....

GNC is expensive... too much competition

I associate it closely with GMC. They’re both overpriced and failing companies.

Gnc is way too expensive. Walmart and Amazon are way cheaper

Summary: OVERPRICED. 📉

Way to pricy for basic supplements. I was very disappointed when I purchased a supplement in discount and found it to be very close to expiry! Never again I got supplements from GNC!

Each time i visited the GNC shops I found their prices were extremely expensive. The shop keepers could not tell the benefits of their supplement but kept on telling me how good their special prices were. When I found their labels of nutrition content, most of them were in exact number, e.g. B1 100mg; B2 100mg; B3 100mg. They were too ideal and perfect. It seemed that all their products were synthesized at the laboratory. All seem to be artificial products, made of chemicals.

Good, high-pressure sales and overpriced products. Hope they get wiped out.

The prices were double of Walgreens, CVS, Target , Kroger, and anything the had under the GNC brand was poor quality

Most people don't need vitamins or supplememts, all they need is a balanced diet.

GNC is too expensive. Powdered protein is 2x the cost of the grocery store.

Finally! About 90% of their customers don’t need any of that stuff.

Thought they went bankrupt long time ago, haven't seen one in ages

People try to get healthy after a healthy crisis. People try to save money after a financial crisis. Pay attention.

GNC sale prices are regular prices on Amazon

You don’t need supplement
Just eat healthy

Can't GNC become a bank and get a full taxpayer-funded bailout?

- GNC was outdated, it reminded me of Sears (=

In Australia the stores are huge, really nicely fitted out and usually only mom and pops who are first time buyers, people who know what they want know it's overpriced

I understand that a lot of their products are overpriced, but a lot of their in house brands are really good. The Beyond Raw Iso-Casein PM has become a part of my nighttime routine. They should pull an 'In-and-Out', simplify their menu, and start looking at themselves like BodyBuilding.com... routines, plans, supplements, social media marketing, etc.

they are filing because their prices are ridiculous and their sales persons now absolutely nothing about supplements.

I use to buy a lot at GNC many years ago when they gave customers good prices, like the membership was worth buying. And they sold and stocked items I wanted.
But when vitamin shop kept up better on new products and sales with rewards and not charging for a membership I shifted to buying from vitamin shop.
Just recently I got some items from one the local GNC stores given online for the past few months they did not have the drinks I wanted.
But even the local stores are still out of stock of some of the flavors for few brands. Another bad thing is brand ghost has an RTD drink they don't have online or stores.
They are not keeping up with new items and stock. Even a few years ago they picked up 5% brand and only sold a few items, so I had to direct or another local shop.

Too expensive. Cheaper to buy online. Not sure what they were thinking!

Shopped at GNC on and off for years. Stopped shopping due to price but recently started shopping there again. Their prices now are surprisingly great and are the same as online. Sounds like they need to work out their price perception.

Good, people need to stop putting all this garbage in their bodies.

They never had what I was looking for the few times I looked. And what I saw was 3 times the price of the drugstore. A lot of very expensive combination products, with ingredients I did not want or need.

Overpriced products and amazon.
The end.

If my last name was Hood, I think I’d name my child Robin.

Nice job by CNBC covering this story and the topic of supplements.

I remember going into GNC to pick up some pre workout 10 years ago and just though wtf when I saw the prices. They were charging stuff that usually went for 50 dollars for 70+ depending on the product. My gym also tried this tactic and it worked since I didn’t know prices back then and bought a few products from them. GNC in now going out of business and there enough complaints from people who go to my gym telling them they were overcharging products so they put the correct prices.

The problem was that the recent success of Bayer's _One-A-Day_ and Pfizer's _Centrum_ brands catering to adults and seniors have really killed a lot of the vitamin business.

Plus location location- with so many being located in malls that have been suffering due to poor foot traffic 😬

I buy my pre workout powder and protein shakes from my local grocery store when I go grocery shopping. Haven’t been to a GNC store in 7 years. So sick of them pushing Gold memberships, and what not.

The only thing I’ll miss is the sound of your footsteps on their wooden floors. I don’t know why but I loved that sound.

Wow... I was wondering about what happened to them! I like the hands-on experience of physically holding and checking out supplements myself... But with that being said, I usually only bought their cheaper or discounted products anyway; you can buy protein powders, creatine, pre-workouts, vitamins and minerals elsewhere for much less expense. Think about it: why buy a tub of whey protein, for example, for 2-3× the price of buying it somewhere else? They hype up and push their products, but outside of any specialty vitamin cocktails they're essentially the same thing as you can find at your nearest Wal-Mart... In fact, Wal-Mart has even been selling some of their products for awhile now - and for half the price of at a GNC. Makes no sense.

no wonder i dun see them around in Singapore anymore, last year, i always see GNC stores empty of customers when i walk past. must be easy being their employee..u just sit at the cashier and stare at the empty store.

GNC would have served its customers better if they could have offered a selection of supplements. When I went into a GNC store years ago, they had stacks of the same items, with little selection to choose from. I've seen a broader selection of supplements at a Walgreens Drug store than what that GNC retailer had at that time.

Worked as a sales associate for 1 year and I hated it. Company always forced us to be pushy and suggest unneeded products to customers, that might of worked in the 90s but in the internet age that doesn’t work anymore considering people have internet in their pocket..

5:34 "bUt ThE gAiNz WeRe ShORt LiVeD", " I see what they did there! 😂 😂 😂

Bought a supplement recommended by the sales person at quite high price years ago. Got allergic reaction after a few days. They refused to exchange or refund. 😤

I worked for GNC for 7 years and this was bound to happen but the main reason I think is the upper management. I've never worked with such a large group of weird, and shady people. They got what they deserve 🤪 My area manager aka Wannabe manager no extra pay was a straight creep who went to court with atleast 5 females for sexual harassment and somehow they didn't fire him. Dude lived with his mom and way over 50 years old! Someone I hired climbed the ladder a d told me one day that they companies plan with me was to train future managers and due to me being mwxican atleast in my circle I would never climb up and she was dead serious. I left many years ago and to see this makes me very happy 👍

I just purchased a GNC product and now stumbled on this video😅.

Doesn't really tell you why they went bankrupt and focuses on the dietary industry instead.

Why GNC, Sears, JCPenney, Toys R us, Forever21, ... and a long list went bankruptcy ?? just one reason ----> Amazon

im surprised they dont see a correlation between gyms closing and reduction in gnc sales during covid . Ive rarely heard of anyone buying general health vitamins from gnc mostly protien, and work out supplement - if people aren't workout , they arent taking supplements, pre workouts, post workouts etc

vitamin = vital mineral

Location of gnc store

Now I don’t have to get GNC and GMC mixed up again 😃

Also because some of us take steroids, we don’t need supplements anymore.

I’ll add something to this analysis; with the increase in information, health conscious people look frequently for individual elements to improve health. There are in the teens, delivery systems for magnesium and loads of info online about which does what.
GNC’s adherence to marketing ploys that combined different elements under a concept like testosterone boosting, hip and joint repair, etc didn’t allow for people wanting Magnesium Malate instead of Mag Oxide. Ever try to buy a simple bottle of Tocopherols instead of a product to boost skin repair?
The rising age of the citizen scientist, those savvy people reading health studies for themselves sank GNC.

They are tooo expensive

I bought from GNC for years, and like the rest of my friends, we all knew we where buying at our own risk. Nothing was FDA proved, but as young teens, some of the stuff worked really well, but most did absolutely nothing. They get you early.

Marketing company first, vitamins are a distance 5th.

Theyre overpriced, always have 1 employee who doesnt know anything and rarely has sales. The stuff you find at GNC is at least 5 bucks cheaper at Walmart, Target and sometimes Vitamin Shoppe.

Filing for bankruptcy because:
1) the sale garbage
2) it’s cheaper online
That should just about cover it.

I'm probably in their target demographic and never even knew that GNC sold supplements, I buy mine all online. Seen the signs on the shops before but never went it, I assume its just more expensive with less variety than there is online

This is one of the best channel for case studies

GNC forces employees to sell their own products over third party products that might better fit what customers are looking for. And other products employees push on customers have commissions attached to them. And the knowledgable staff part is laughable. As long as you memorize some of the ingredients in each product you can sound like you know your stuff.

Lack of training for employees, very high prices, horrible product selection for plano grams, and stagnant product line

Their prices are pretty low on Amazon here in Canada

I was there during the boom, one analyst was right, at the time there were people who knew what they we’re talking about, but it slowly once Apollo took over they shifted into how much money and how fast can we make it... that led to a shift of service which turned off a lot of customers who now had more options and took their money elsewhere. BTW Apollo hedge fund double their investment once they sold to the canandian teachers union fund. Vitamin Shoppe is slowly heading that way also. Sad

As a buyer of sport supplements like protein powered, pre workouks ect the main reason I never used them was because they are far to expensive and only concentrated on rip off high revenue expensive premium names maximuscle.
When you can get a cheap brand like optimum health that are the exact same quality power just not with the massive mark up because it's maximuscle.
So everything I get comes from online at a third of the that it would be in GNC

Way overpriced products. That's why I buy to local distributors. Even with the "discounts" GNC offers the products are still more expensive.

I like that, people get all the vitamins and minerals from other sources. I've seen what many people buy on the checkout lines at Walmart.

E-Commerce is assassinating a few industries, Supplements and nutrition physical stores is definitely one of them.

my friend works at vitamin shoppe and says they've been crazy busy selling all the vitamin supplements

GNC once charged me $10.00, for a for a key chain member barcode to supposedly get discounts. When I did a price comparisons with other retailers. GNC was double or triple the prices. I guess that member bar code was another way to rip you off too!

Private equity firms... great. Even our OTPP partnered up with another PE firm to buy GNC, from another PE firm who purchased them, and then IPO'd half of their position back in 2010. I don't know if OTPP got out eventually.
As for complaints about a "Chinese company" picking them up. No other bids. Enough said. Either let it fail for getting gutted by PE firms and mismanagement and let creditors go to zero or somebody else pony up the cash to take them out.

Since the 80's Codex Alimentarius was initiated and it will take vitamins off the market and they will be considered toxic, but also GNC prices are very expensive and this is most likely why they went bankrupt

Besides online businesses killing them, they stopped selling the "hard core" stuff. if you wanted to buy a 'grey area' supplement you had to buy from someone else. After that you just stop even looking to buy something from GNC.

I always thought, GNC is somehow related to GMC when I was a kid.

GNC overcharged for products you can buy in bulk and capsulate yourself. I learned this about a decade ago. I am so much healthier due to a Keto diet and supplementation. Also thanks to Dr. Eric Berg, Dr. Mercola among others on KRplus!

I worked there. They were not competitive and greedy as hell. Amazon could have beaten them under any circumstances. I wanted to help people, they just wanted me to sell, sell, sell. Many of the customers were driven by Woman's World magazine of all stupid things. Mention a product in that magazine and people would queue up for it. No one cared what worked, only what corporate wanted to push that week. You could tell people the weight loss products were BS but they wanted to believe so bad they'ed buy them at any price. Helping people was nice when it rarely worked but most people are resistant to help and good information.

plus the fridges onsite would handle the daily fresh fruits and foods. but GNC never moved to fresh food onsite a missed Opportunity.

Honestly, once I heard of bodybuilding.com it was a wrap from there. And thanks to word of mouth and the acknowledgement of fitness e commerce websites, surprises me how they lasted this long.

I like how he cringed before saying supplements are essential for health.

What is AMP stands for?

I always go to the vitamin shoppe...GNC to me was always about body building

Vitamin shoppe has been doing good in jersey

GNC is overpiced and I have a membership but HATE going in the stores because every store I go into I’m literally attacked by the salesperson. They are soooo aggressive and it literally stresses me out.

GNC is history. Only the naive go there now like myself 12 years ago. Local supplement stores are cheaper and even better Amazon and Walmart delivers supplements for free if you order over 35 dollars worth.

For what it’s worth they price match... Amazon, Vitamin Shoppe, Bodybuilding.com and others. So if you still want to brick and mortar shop you can hold them accountable for fairer prices. Online prices for quality product aren’t great either for what it’s worth.

In the US dietary supplements are not regulated ? Not tested ? Is it just me (European view) or this is playing with fire ? Is the American people ok with this ??

GNC's logo always had me thinking it was GMC

It seems like it will be easier for the public to “Live Well” if GNC dies. I hope they slip into chapter 7 bankruptcy and go away. If a certain Utah Senator Hatch goes away or quits blocking reasonable efforts to protect the public from unsafe supplements, that would also help.

I alway price match with Amazon whenever I go there!

Just way too expensive. Period.