The health supplements industry can be a very lucrative one if you get it right and there are two approaches you can take. You can get involved at supplier or manufacturer level or you can simply be a retailer, whether you’re selling directly via your website/blog or indeed if you’re going to stock physical inventory in your shop.

Either way, there are some challenges you’ll need to be prepared to face.

Extra tight regulation

The health of the people is at stake here and it goes beyond just regular food items with health supplements, so expect really tight regulations. This perhaps applies more so to those who are seeking to enter the health supplements industry on the level of the manufacturer or supplier – it can get expensive too complying with the very tight but necessary regulations.

Possibility of a future backlash

You’re not only in it for the now if you’re in the health supplements industry. It’s about long-term results and if those long term results turn out not to be so good, you may find yourself having to deal with a backlash in the form of retrospective claims as part of something like a class action law suit.

Heavy competition

If you’re going to be pushing one brand in health supplements then you’re pretty much setting yourself up for failure. Competition is so tough in this industry that you’d best put yourself in line to rather benefit from it by carrying different brands of health supplements. It can get expensive though.

Lots of pressure to succeed

Sometimes consumers don’t even use health supplements as directed or they don’t experience typical results, in which case it can become very easy for the blame to be shifted onto you as the supplier or retailer. So there’s a lot of pressure to succeed – pressure which can perhaps be accounted for through marketing and awareness campaigns where you endeavour to educate consumers about the health supplementation products they’re buying from you.

Volatile market conditions

Volatile market conditions affecting your business if you’re in the health supplements industry probably only really apply if yours is a large-scale operation, to the tune of perhaps having listed your company publically. You don’t have to have been the one who has listed publically via an IPO – it could be your major supplier. In which case something as seemingly insignificant as news of how you received a letter from a Securities Fraud Lawyer reaching the markets could set off a panic in the market, prompting investors to dump your shares and traders to go short on them, but that’s all just part of the business if you’ve scaled it up to these levels.

Market conditions are indeed volatile, so if you are involved in the health supplements business at this level, make sure to build up a nice little safety net which would see you having cashed out with a nice payday.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but health supplements seem to come and go, so unless you’ll be in the industry as a retailer then it’s not a business which one should aim to be in forever.