'Fitness' trumps 'sports' in terms of marketing opportunities, AIDP says

“We believe that ‘fitness’ is a broader market. It can skew young or old,”​ said Kathy Lund, vice president of marketing and business development for City of Industry, CA-based ingredient supplier AIDP Inc.

Researching the opportunities​

Lund, who spoke with NutraIngredients-USA at the recent SupplySide West trade show in Las Vegas, NV, said the fitness market is an order of magnitude bigger than that for sports nutrition.  AIDP commissioned a study by Doug Kalman, PhD, of Miami Research Associates, to quantify the relative opportunities.

“He found the purchasing power of what you would call ‘fitness’ will grow to about $67 billion by 2017. Sports nutrition, by contrast, is about a $5 billion market.  The opportunity for manufacturers is to focus on products with a fitness positioning, because it is a much better return on investment,”​ Lund said.

Kalman’s report focused on the broad trends driving the market.  He found that in 2012, the sports nutrition market stood at about $4.7 billion and was exhibiting a 15% growth rate.  That rate has slowed, though, and is now projected in the near future at 7%. The question becomes, should a company target athletes, or general health and wellness via a tie-in with healthy activity levels?

Activity levels correspond with obesity​

Kalman researched where people are the most active in the US and found that states in the inter-mountain West topped the list, with Colorado leading the pack. That list also included an odd outlier in Indiana. By contrast, the nation’s couch potato core spread from Mississippi, Alabama and Arkansas up through Kentucky, West Virginia and Ohio.  This distribution roughly correlates with a map of the thinnest and fattest states in the nation. Colorado leads that list too, as the thinnest (or better put, least fat) state in the nation with Mississippi coming in last, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention​.

The research Kalman looked at quantified ‘active to a healthy level or beyond’ as participating in a high calorie activity more than 151 times a year.  ‘Active’ people participated 51 to 150 times a year.  By those measures, 44% of the nation is participating in a high calorie activity at least once a week.

The research also showed that ‘fitness sports’ participation (the precise definition left undefined) stood at 62% in 2012.  This was far and away the leader, topping ‘outdoor sports’ (49%) and ‘individual sports’ (37%).  Of course, all three categories could include hard core athletes who are consuming targeted sports nutrition products such as pre-workout supplements, but are more likely to consist of a majority of participants who are taking part as a matter of general fitness and well-being.

Commercializing ingredients​

Lund said AIDP was looking to use Kalman’s reasearch to help broadenas it seeks to broaden the market for several of its branded ingredients, including Advantein, a brown rice and pea protein blend and Gabiotein, a sprouted brown rice protein.  AIDP has promoted these for a variety of usages including nutrition bars. Kalman’s research found that 77 million people currently consume energy/sports drinks in the US while 28 million consume nutrition bars.

Getting the word out about new branded ingredients can be along slog, she said, when taking the bureaucratic nature of large companies into account.  And it’s necessary to fight against a race to the bottom in terms of pricing in the protein markets.

 “The protein market is somewhere between a branded ingredient and a commodity,”​ Lund said. “We are in development with a lot of big CPG companies.  A pilot test takes three months.”​