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by Matt Weik, BS, CSCS, CPT, CSN
I can only speak for some of the brands that have reached out to me for my thoughts and opinions on how to move forward, but the Amazon compliance announcement rocked the supplement industry when the news broke.
For those of you who have no idea what I’m speaking of, I have a link at the very bottom of this article that will take you to the announcement being covered over on NutraIngredients-USA.com.
But in this article, I’m going to lay out my opinion of both the good and the bad that’s going to come from this. Let’s dive into things!
What Changed with Amazon Compliance?
Up until the latest Amazon compliance announcement, supplement brands were able to send their CoAs (Certificates of Analysis) for each supplement they wanted to sell on Amazon. This could be done through their own in-house lab or through a third party.
Additionally, brands needed to provide a Letter of Guarantee that their supplements meet GMP (Good Manufacturing Practices), meet label claims, and are considered safe.
Well, Amazon’s compliance changed, and now some brands are thinking about pulling their entire line of products from Amazon.
According to the new Amazon compliance notice, brands must either be NSF certified or undergo testing from a lab that works with Amazon (such as NSF International or Eurofins) in order to be sold on their website.
Now, you might be saying to yourself, “Who cares? Just get the testing done.” Unfortunately, getting supplements tested (especially more than once if a brand already had their supplements tested through a lab, but that lab doesn’t work with Amazon) is incredibly expensive. From what I’m told, pricing can be as much as $6,000 per product.
If a brand had 10 products and sold them all on Amazon, they’d be dropping $60,000 just to get those products tested and be eligible to sell their products on the site under the new Amazon compliance guidelines.
Why is the New Amazon Compliancy Both Good and Bad?
I’m going to play both sides of the argument here, as I can see the pros and cons of everything. Let’s run through both circumstances below.
The Good
As a consumer, I’m all for ensuring the supplements that both you and I take are safe and meet label claims. It’s not that I don’t trust brands out there today, but unless you’re clueless about the supplement industry, there have been some shady brands doing some pretty unethical things over the years.
So, I think there’s a positive with this that Amazon’s compliance is now forcing brands who want to sell on their site to get their products tested to ensure quality.
The Bad
NOW Foods looked at berberine supplements back in December 2023 and got random products tested, only to find out that many supplement brands selling berberine actually had either no berberine in the supplement at all or it was drastically lower than what the label claimed.
It seems that this may have opened a can of worms, and Amazon saw these products being sold on their site and decided to get stricter on their compliance standards.
If you were to use NOW Foods as an example, I stopped counting at 50 of their products on Amazon, and there were many more pages for me to click on and comb through. But to low-ball the costs involved, NOW Foods would have to pay over $300,000 just for those products to be tested.
Along with the cost, do you know how long it would take for 50+ products to get tested? It’s not going to be a quick process, and with everyone now having to go through NSF International or Eurofins for testing, you can expect a backlog of brands trying to get their supplements tested for Amazon compliance.
It’s not understood if supplements will stay up for a certain period before they are taken down or if a brand communicates with Amazon that they’re getting everything tested; therefore, Amazon keeps the products up for the time being. Or perhaps Amazon goes nuclear and removes ALL supplements from the site until brands get their testing done. Who knows?
All of that I’m not sure of is that many brands are also confused about what the process looks like for the new Amazon compliance.
The good from the bad is that many other online (and brick-and-mortar) supplement retailers are going to get business from brands that don’t want to support the Amazon platform anymore. Does this mean their products don’t meet label claims if they don’t agree to get more testing done for Amazon compliance? No, not at all. It could be due to financial reasons.
Brands who don’t want to shell out six figures or more to get their products tested (potentially again, even if they used a third-party lab in the past) could take their ball and go home. This allows the little guys (smaller supplement retailers and websites) to gain new customers and potentially steal sales from Amazon.
The NET of the New Amazon Compliance
To be honest, I’m not sure what to think. I feel bad for the brands that now have to pay a lot of money to go through more testing, but at the same time, I like the fact that consumers can purchase with confidence.
Small brands that only sell on Amazon are in deep trouble. Who knows if they’ll make it if they can’t afford all the testing? They may have to pivot and sell elsewhere (which they should have never put all their eggs in one basket anyway and should have diversified).
At the same time, brands may need to increase their prices on Amazon to buffer the huge expense of getting all their products tested. Will this drive consumers away from purchasing on Amazon? Possibly.
All in all, I’m going to have to play neutral like Switzerland, as it’s hard to say what side wins here. The supplement brands are the losers in this instance, and the consumers are the winners. But I feel bad for the various brands I work with as they are going to feel the pain in their expenses for all the testing.
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