Trend-driven supplement formulas often don’t earn repeat orders, Licata says

Paul Licata, president of Licata Enterprises, tries to steer customers away from formulas built on quick social media trends. If that's what they want, he told WholeFoods Magazine, his company will make it. Few of those formulas have resulted in repeat orders.

Licata, president of contract manufacturer Licata Enterprises, told WholeFoods Magazine associate editor Richard Ortega that new-ingredient trends now arrive through TV spots and short social clips, often with little data behind them. He says that has always happened in the industry, but it's speeding up. Customers want those formulas right away and give little thought to whether the potency or the ingredient pairings are right.

His team tries to steer them elsewhere. If the customer insists, the plant makes the product anyway. Few of those launches, he said, have come back as repeat orders.

That last detail matters most to a brand's head of product or operations. Licata's experience suggests that the real test of a formula is whether anyone orders it a second time.

Store brands gain on a growing base

The market these manufacturers work in is large and still growing. The private label side is seeing growth as well.

According to the Private Label Manufacturers Association, store brand unit sales rose 0.2% in the first half of 2026. Over the same stretch, unit sales of national brands fell 0.5% compared with a year earlier, leaving a 0.7% gap between the two.

Neither number calls for a victory lap. A 0.2% unit gain is small, and the association's data covers store brands broadly, not supplements alone. The Grand View Research estimate covers regional contract manufacturing services overall.

Longevity built around the daily habit

Alexej Dens, sales director for SIRIO Europe, told the magazine that longevity is the clearest structural trend in the category. The science on healthy aging is moving fast. For brands trying to turn it into something consumers understand and keep taking, he said, it can be overwhelming.

SIRIO is responding with Aeion. Dens calls it a habit-first range of longevity concepts that are ready to launch, each combining proven actives with formats that fit into a person's daily routine. According to Dens, consumer interest is not tied to one ingredient. It covers cellular energy, inflammaging, mobility and heart health.

For a brand or retailer without its own formulation scientists, ready-to-launch concepts could shorten the path to shelf. That would matter most to a private label team that wants a longevity line but has no appetite for building one from the research literature.

Testing the reorder argument

The strongest objection is the sample size. Licata is one manufacturer describing his own customers, and his shop still makes what they ask for. Some trend launches presumably earn their keep in a single run. Dens is describing a product line his company sells, not reporting sell-through results.

Even so, the two views fit together. One manufacturer sees trend formulas fade after the first order. Another is building its catalog around products meant to be taken every day.

The signal to watch is whether habit-first longevity lines like Aeion produce the repeat orders that Licata says trend formulas have mostly failed to deliver.