Amazon continues to expand its market leadership as the number one retailer of supplements ahead of even physical retail chains like Walmart. In the last year, Amazon has generated about $13 billion in categorical sales…up around 15% YoY. But the word "Amazon" also has created such a visceral reaction amongst much of the legacy supplement industry ecosystem. Depending on the person’s perspective you’re asking, you’ll get a slightly different reason for why they blame Amazon for the demise of the supplement industry (or should I say the previous version of the supplement industry they are nostalgic about). See…what I noticed starting in the mid-2010s was a collection of legacy supplement industry stakeholders growing continually more frantic about changing power dynamics. In fact, fear was quickly building that any semblance of yesteryear’s much tighter gatekept supplement industry ecosystem would soon be extinct. So, what do you do if you’re a cash cow generating legacy supplement industry player losing your gatekeeping powers? You utilize those massive internal resources to put leverage on who you believe ruined the “good ole days.” In terms of “how” these legacy supplement industry stakeholders are deploying those massive internal resources against Amazon…it's both backchanneling and then public-facing "compliance marketing" strategy. Regardless, it all rolls up into these previous gatekeepers calling on Amazon to reign in supplement industry bad actors by suggesting the online marketplace implement more and more compliance hurdles. This effort was arguably successful twice in 2021…as Amazon updated its requirements for listing dietary supplements on the platform. But that doesn’t appear to be enough…because there has been an uptick of public-facing pressure towards Amazon by these legacy supplement industry stakeholders. And even if Amazon hasn’t responded yet…this strategy might have done one better by indirectly getting the FDA’s attention, hence the three separate warning letters sent to Amazon from 8/18/23 to 12/20/23. But to help add some depth to the compliance side and balance my business perspective, I asked Brian Yam, who has two decades of regulatory affairs and quality assurance experience across every side of the supplement industry, to join me in a recent conversation. We deeply examined topics such as why the FDA is placing pressure on Amazon, if this could eventually lead to a market-bending precedent across today’s retail models, why FDA might be more effective placing proxy enforcement pressure elsewhere, plus we go talk about the under the radar short- and long-term possible implications to all supplement industry stakeholders.

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