Do you remember a few years ago when I laid out my long-term vision for the wellness retailing world…one where pharmacies and specialty supplement retailers would start merging conceptually? Though small underlying market forces have been slowly confirming that future, a GNC announcement last week might have altered everything. In August 2021, a year-ish after the company’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy saga ended, I asked myself “what could the GNC shopping experience of the future look like?” In that content piece, I defined the future as being sometime in the late-2020s and into the early-2030s…so there was definitely a focus towards presenting radical innovation ideas. Despite that, the GNC “Store of the Future” concept wasn’t rooted in fantasy but focused on four fundamentals of retailing: how to get more people in the front door, how to get them in the front door more often, provide things that matter most to consumers, and offering on-brand on-trend products and services. And then a few months later in November 2021, as I was talking about a recent partnership between the startup Hims & Hers and GNC’s main competitor, The Vitamin Shoppe…I provided more detail around how I envisioned that initial step of pharmacies and specialty supplement retailers merging. Why do I bring up these two previous pieces of 2021 content? GNC just unveiled its revamped GNC Pro Access paid loyalty program featuring what they’re calling GNC Health. This unique offering will provide GNC Pro Access members free healthcare services, including telehealth appointments with licensed medical professionals to address urgent care and personal health needs, as well as access to a curated set of over 40 generic versions of most urgent care medications and 70+ generic personal health medications across lifestyle, dermatology, mental health, sports performance, anti-aging, and sexual health care. So, GNC essentially echoed some of my previous strategic thoughts and I want to commend them for acknowledging that the legacy retail business model is dead. This was a big first step into providing a frictionless truly personalized shopping experience that leverages integrated big data throughout every step within the customer’s wellness journey to help them reach more goals with a higher probability.

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