March 2, 2021
When one thinks about the giants of the U.S. weight loss market, people usually assume that most of the sales go to Weight Watchers, NutriSystem and Jenny Craig. With the exception of WW, they’d be wrong.
Today, the MLM (multi-level marketing) companies capture a major share of sales of weight loss products (mostly meal replacement shakes, powders and nutrition bars), and it has been this way for a long time. But, these companies don’t have large national TV advertising campaigns and many are not well-known household names.
From our current research of the weight loss market, for Marketdata’s upcoming study: “The U.S. Weight Loss & Diet Control Market”, due out in a few weeks, here’s a list of these top MLM competitors and their actual/estimated 2020 sales of diet products/programs in the U.S.
(2020 U.S. sales, in $ millions)
Beachbody – $1,050
Medifast (Optavia) – $934
Herbalife – $821
Shaklee – $231
Isagenix – $206
AMWAY (Quixtar) – $122
Nu-Skin – $64
Total: $3,428 ($3.42 billion)
That’s $3.42 BILLION with a B, in sales. And this is not a complete list. There are about two dozen MLMs selling weight loss products. Many of them derive most of their sales outside of the United States. They prefer to operate in less restrictive markets such as Southeast Asia and China, where multi-level marketing is more accepted and less regulated.
This MLM tally is higher than the combined retail sales of Weight Watchers ($1.37 billion), NutriSystem ($684 mill.), Atkins ($529 mill.), Jenny Craig ($400 mill.), and Slim-Fast ($275 mill.) – $3.26 billion.
MLMs sell their products via an army of part-time “distributors”, “coaches”, or “consultants”, many of which become a distributor in order to get a discounted price on products for their personal use.
For More Information and Detailed Profiles of the Leading MLMs…
…and Commercial Weight Loss Centers, and Forecasts, and effects of the pandemic in 2020, watch for Marketdata’s upcoming, newly revised report: “The U.S. Weight Loss & Diet Control Market, due out in mid-March.
See www.marketdataenterprises.com for a Table of Contents and to order the study. Or call: 813-971-8080, M-F, 9-5. We also do custom projects, consulting, and teleconference calls with John LaRosa.