Matevž Ambrožič
Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of NutraLoop™ Podcast, a podcast by PharmaLinea. My name is Matevž Ambrožič, and I’m the Marketing Director at PharmaLinea. I’m very happy to be joined here today by Mr. Scott Dicker, who is a Senior Director and Head of Research and Insights at SPINS.
Scott Dicker
Hey, thanks for having me. Great to be here.
Matevž Ambrožič
Thank you, Scott. SPINS, I’m sure you all know, have one of the best, if not the best, sets of retail data in the US natural products industry. And today, we’ll be unpacking and dissecting the creatine boom. Creatine is everywhere right now. If you’re in the nutraceutical industry, you can’t escape it basically. New launches every week, gummies, women’s health, cognition, hydration hybrids – everybody seems to have their own take on creatine. But here’s the real question – is this just another industry hype cycle, or are we witnessing the transformation of creatine from a gym-only ingredient into a true mass market health category? Because, you know, headlines are one thing, and sell-out data is another. And in this episode, we’re going to be going beyond LinkedIn excitement. We’re unpacking what the actual number says. How big is the creating boom really? Is growth also coming from new consumers, or are the same consumers buying more formats? And also, does this resemble what is happening or what happened with hydration as a category in recent years? And most importantly, who is actually winning? Are powders still dominating? Are gummies creating real incremental value? Is premium positioning paying off? Are we already in a price war and so forth? And to answer these questions, I’m joined by somebody who doesn’t have to speculate, because Scott Dicker from SPINS brings really granular and reliable data. So, today we have the unique opportunity to answer all of these questions with answers grounded in facts. And, we’ll look at what’s happening now, who’s capturing the growth, and what brands should be thinking about over the next 12 months or 24 months. So, if you’re a brand owner, a product manager, or an ingredient supplier trying to decide whether or not to enter the creatine space or how to position yourself within the space, this episode is for you. Okay, so without further ado, let’s start with kind of the beginning, where we will establish the creatine trend, the macro view. I can say from our own very basic data that Google searches have grown with a 44% compound annual growth rate from 2020 to 2025. But that’s at the level of consumer interests, and I’m interested to know from Scott specifically, to begin with, to lay the groundwork – at a category level, what does the current US sellout data say about creatine?
Scott Dicker
Thanks so much for the nice intro and for having me. Creatine has been one of the top booming ingredients over the past, let’s say, three to five years. And what’s really interesting, before we get into the data, people always ask me, “What’s going to be the next trending ingredient?” And almost always they think I’m going to say some new and novel ingredient, but it’s always an established ingredient that finds new health focuses, new demographics, something new that re-emerges, that people are already comfortable with, that there’s a supply chain for, and creatine fits that bill. For decades now, it’s been a gym ingredient. But to your point in your intro, it’s really come out of the gym and into the office, into everyone’s lifestyle, not just for young men trying to get jacked, but for everyone now. You see that really play out in the sales data. We’ve seen mid to high double-digit growth in the past couple of years for creatine, both in-store and online. For 2025, I’ve just pulled a number up, it grew 76 percent when you do the combined channel of natural, conventional, and online on Amazon. This really shows a very robust interest in creatine, and you don’t get that just from the gym bros. It stayed steady with small growth for many years based on the gym bros, but you’re seeing explosive growth now.
Matevž Ambrožič
And Scott, 76%, is it worth mentioning – I don’t know if that’s true or not, but what’s the basis that that’s growing from? I’m assuming it’s not, as you mentioned, a completely novel category, a completely novel ingredient, where the basis where it’s growing from is really small and therefore getting a high double-digit growth is so much easier. This is an established category to begin with.
Scott Dicker
Yeah, so it ended the year at just about 650 million. This is just on creatine products, this is the creatine subcategory. So, this doesn’t even include all the pre-workouts that contain creatine in them. This is just when people are buying creatine as a standalone product.
Matevž Ambrožič
As a standalone only, okay, interesting. I was immediately reminded of the movement and the evolution of hydration in the years past because also in that case, correct me if I’m wrong, it evolved from a sports-only category to hydration for everybody, basically. I can even say that I see similarities in the communication that the big brands that are driving this growth are using. I remember Liquid I.V.’s “Fuel Your Play” campaign, where, you know, different demographic groups, not just sports people, but all kinds of people, even the elderly and so forth, are using hydration products as a kind of a source of general well-being and energy. And just recently, the Thorne campaign that they recently put out on creatine used kind of even similar wording, you would almost be able to say. Do you see those similarities also in the data comparing hydration and creatine
Scott Dicker
There are some similarities, and then there are also some differences. The similarities are what you mentioned: an established category that started in the gym, has moved out of the gym, and found new health focuses. In hydration’s concern, it went from, again, like endurance athletes, mostly specifically endurance athletes, to everyday hydration. People are just trying to hydrate throughout the day. It was being used as a hangover remedy, people were using it for all types of things, we saw seasonality of it go up and down. Creatine, you can argue, it went just from an energy and strength ingredient. Now, cognitive is the big one, but there’s a wide range of health focuses that are being looked at even beyond cognition, although that’s the next big one. But then there are a few differences. Hydration is really a health focus category that they’re finding adjacent benefits for, where creatine is an ingredient. There are a little bit differences in that regard. And also, most of the time when a health focus or an ingredient really takes off, there are a couple of brands, one or two brands that are really leading it. And you mentioned some of the ones who really drove especially the powdered hydration. If we want to talk about ready-to-drink and all the sports drinks, that’s a little bit of a different story, but still relevant there. And then with creatine, it was really the ingredient itself that started trending. That’s a unique aspect where it wasn’t a single brand that led the growth of it, it was the creatine itself. There are some differences there, but some similarities to hydration, which we’ve seen have really extraordinary growth over the past few years as well. Although I do want to note that for a while, the extraordinary growth was in both ready-to-mix and ready-to-drink, and now the ready-to-drinks have flattened out.
Matevž Ambrožič
As in hydration?
Scott Dicker
Yes.
Matevž Ambrožič
Okay. And this extraordinary growth in creatine, can we dive a little bit into, let’s say, a little bit of speculation, what is driving this growth? What’s the real driver of this? I see on the one hand, companies like Spate reporting over 101% growth of creatine mentions on TikTok in the past half year, that was September year to date, September 2025 versus the previous year. And then on the other hand, the one I basically prefer, scientific publications on creatine are really blooming, blossoming. It’s been one of the most researched nutritional ingredients for a long time, but really, the curve is just going really, really high up. Now we’re reaching, at least if you look at PubMed data, which is really readily available, you have about 2.500 studies being published per year now on creatine, growing from just a couple of hundred, maybe 10, 20 years ago. What do you think is the main driver? Of course, there is money. Maybe in your view, are there any main drivers of this growth? Is it the social momentum, or is it structural drivers like science, broader use cases, or retail expansion? What’s your take?
Scott Dicker
I mentioned earlier that it’s usually an established ingredient. Creatine, to your point, had that established scientific background, widespread use case, and safety research on it. That gave it a foundation to not hit a lot of the hurdles that a new ingredient can hit. When you look at what else can happen, it’s new demographics. Again, it’s not just young men in the gym, women are taking creatine, different people are aging into creatine, and for a few different reasons. There’s people who were taking creatine in their 20s as gym bros, so they’re used to it. So, now they’re comfortable retaking it for energy or for cognition. There are other demographics and aging populations who are just discovering it for the cognitive health claims now. The new demographics, I would say, are the largest driver. Then there’s a lot of that that’s driven by new health focuses. We talked about cognitive, you mentioned the wide range of studies that are being done on everything, think from bone health to hormonal health to cycle health, all these different things that are going to lead to it. Then there’s also the new forms. It’s an interesting ingredient because it was so heavily in just the powdered version. I know there were some pills, it was capsules full of powder. You’re seeing this emergence, and I think we’re going to get into it in a little bit of gummies, of chews, of ready-to-drinks. This lets it become more mainstream, ready to consume. Finally, one of the ones that I hadn’t thought of much before is for the cognitive benefits, well, let me take a step back. I was always told that you load creatine, you saturate your muscles, and then you take three to five grams a day for maintenance, and then you’re fine. You’re saturated, all your energy stores are there. But now a lot of the research coming in, especially around cognitive benefits, is, you know, I’ve been hearing, take eight grams a day, take ten grams a day, some people even more. Now, not only are you getting new people taking it in new formats, but the people who are already taking it, now you’re saying, take more of it. All of this is just, you know, gung-ho to the winds at your back for creatine surge.
Matevž Ambrožič
You’re absolutely on point on the different areas, cognition being one of them. I can see, you know, people in my circles. Typically, trends start in the US, and they stay there for a while, and then they migrate to both sides of the world. I mean, to either side of the US. It’s interesting how, in recent years, this is going really much faster than it used to, the lag time is much shorter. I think that as soon as talk of cognitive benefits appeared in the US, the first cognitive-positioned creatine SKUs appeared there, we started talking about it here. In the office, there’s talk about it. It’s not a far-fetched thing anymore. The one thing that I think we’re now starting to outpace in the consumer demand side is the research that’s coming with it. Because, particularly on cognition, I’d really like to see many more studies on subjects without any cognitive issues, because the majority, as I’m told and as I’ve researched, the majority of studies are in some sort of cognitive impairment or some suboptimal condition, whereas studies on healthy subjects taking creatine to improve their cognitive capabilities are not so strong yet.
Scott Dicker
Yeah, no, I would agree. The only thing, you know, I’m looking at it much more from a market perspective and consumer demand. And once that research, once those inklings of a study are out there, there’s going to be consumer interest in trying to get ahead of it. Whether it’s a trend or just trending for that moment will depend a lot on the outcome, but you’re going to see an initial surge there. I think there’s enough smoke there for people to be interested in it, so to speak, even if it’s not for acute benefits, which I think, to your point, we need to have some more research on. The preventative nature of it will keep people there, and it just goes along with the other energy, strength benefits that people are taking it for.
Matevž Ambrožič
Okay, Scott, let’s then move on, what we’ve already started touching upon is the topic of who’s winning right now. We mentioned formats in particular, because it’s one of the main areas of discussion in new product and innovation in the creatine segment. I believe that is the consequence of the fact that creatine monohydrate is a simple and well-established ingredient, and has high bioavailability, it has good research. There’s not so much to do there, really, in terms of how we can make creatine products better. The most obvious part is, which we both very well know as we’re taking creatine drinks, creatine powders dissolved in water right now, that typically, the dissolving part is not as good. The user experience when you’re dissolving creatine monohydrate powders in water is not perfect. That’s kind of the main venue of development, of innovation, of improving products. I would say that from the user perspective, but tell me from the data perspective, which formats do you believe are capturing most of the sales volume and growth, or will do so in the future?
Scott Dicker
So first off, I just want to say that we did not plan to both be drinking our creatine while we were doing this podcast, but we just both happened to be drinking our creatine, which tells you a little bit about how integrated it is in people’s routine that we just happened to be drinking our creatine while talking about creatine on a podcast. Almost all the sales right now are in powders, and they’re still growing really well. In the past year or two we’ve seen this huge surge in creatine gummies hit the market. And creatine gummies, let me just make sure I’m saying the right number. Powders are up over 50% year-over-year, gummies are up from a much smaller base 129 % year-over-year. Now, there are a lot of caveats there. First one is that it’s obviously growing from a much smaller base. Two, there’s been a lot of testing to show that certain brands don’t have creatine in them. So, there’s that stigma, that hurdle, and that formulation to get over. Some brands may have done it, but we know that some of the ones that were tested didn’t, so there’s that stigma around it as well. If that’s proven out, I think there’s a big, big room for growth in gummies and chews. Then you get into all the other ready-to-consume things. When you look at what functional ingredients really make it, they almost all start in supplements, then they get different formats, then they cross over into functional beverages, which we could get on creatine in a minute, and then the ones that really make it, you’ll see it in your cereal, your granola, your bars, things like that. Creatine has the opportunity to be in all of those. You see the creatine ready-to-drink coming out already. They have similar formulations, stability challenges as gummies obviously, but I think consumers are ready for them. There are some watch-outs as well as some opportunities there. Obviously, the convenience factor, the ready-to-consume, the functional beverage market is really ripe for a lot of growth there. But there are some call-outs there, whereas the unflavored powder, for example, will have a price per serving very low. When we get to gummies, it’s going to go higher. You get to ready-to-drink, you might be looking at three or four American dollars for a couple of grams serving. That is something to watch out for. Also, when you move into these other formats, there’s more of a consumer expectation of an acute benefit, whereas many people know that creatine works by building up and saturating your muscles, like I mentioned. When people look for a functional beverage, for example, whether that’s an energy drink that they’re looking for immediate energy from or a relaxation beverage that they’re looking for immediate relaxation from, you have to make sure that expectations are set properly for these. These are just a couple of call-outs, but the different formats give it a lot of room to grow in the ready-to-consume market.
Matevž Ambrožič
Managing expectations in terms of the communication of the effect in the ready-to-drinks. In the gummies section and soft juice, it would be, I guess, mostly fighting the stigma now, right?
Scott Dicker
I think both. Both have both of the of the, I don’t want to say, issues. But, you know, as you hit much more mainstream, I’m looking at right now. Right now, the largest cohort of consumers who use creatine are the 18- to 24-year-olds, which I don’t think is a big surprise, and that’s just over a third of them, report using it, and then it goes down from there. There’s still a huge white space opportunity for consumers, where, for example, you get to the 50- to 64-year-olds, it’s only 8%. And when you talk about preserving muscle mass, which is big in their health span, cognitive health, there’s a big opportunity there. As you get new consumers, you want to make sure that they are educated and their expectations are set properly, or you risk turning them off to the ingredient in general.
Matevž Ambrožič
Do you have perhaps any split on bisects as well? Because what I see in a lot of the more interesting new launches that are more outside the, let’s say, gym bro world, is that they are really specifically targeted at women. All the communication, it’s interesting to see, is all focused on the perceived negative side effects of creatine, which is about not bloating.
Scott Dicker
Bloating, yeah.
Matevž Ambrožič
Not causing bloating, not having a greedy texture. Well, that’s not a side effect, but not the best user experience. It’s interesting to see the wording of the effects, instead of bulking or muscle building, it’s toning. body toning and so forth. It’s really a completely different set of words that, I guess, are more meant to appeal to women. What I really thought was quite fascinating was the more recent launch of Lemme Creatine Gummies, which had as the star of the kind of the campaign, the video ad, Chris Jenner. And her being kind of an ambassador for creatine, saying that she powers her cells, which lets her run empires through creatine, is really like the exact symbol of how creatine products are changing right now, from the gym bro being the ambassador to Kris Jenner, a middle-aged or I’m not exactly sure how much, 50 plus year old woman.
Scott Dicker
Yeah, it’s very interesting. One of the biggest changes is the inclusion of women in it. We talked about active nutrition, the whole category in general, which is obviously inclusive, but not limited to creatine, has been the top growth supplement category for each of the past four or five years in this space. Part of that has been the explosion of women into the category, where that category was always typically young men in the gym, and creatine as an ingredient was probably the biggest example of young men in the gym. Of all the talk about women’s health and supplements, one of the main things that you’re seeing is that they are being included in some of these other categories, such as active nutrition and for our conversation here, specifically creatine, to the point where they actually over-index compared to a general consumer in the younger age groups of the 25 to 34, up until really 54, they’re over indexing the general consumer. There’s still a large gap between them and their male counterparts, so there’s an opportunity there. But it is interesting where you see them, you know, there’s the creatine for women. It has collagen and colostrum in there or something like that. They’re trying to stack on benefits for beauty from within. There are ways that people are trying to position it more from women, both in the claims. I always chuckle at the claim when it says, it’s not going to be bulking. If there was an ingredient out there that made you bulky, I always joke, all guys would look the same. There’d be one product and lines around the block for it. That always made me laugh when people thought that they’d take a scoop of creatine and just get bulky and look like a bodybuilder. But that is a stigma that was out there, especially around women, and a lot of that had to do with some of the legacy marketing of creatine. It was marketed as more of a hardcore bodybuilding supplement in the past, and so there’s some of that legacy that the industry and the ingredients are still moving on from.
Matevž Ambrožič
Do you think that, moving perhaps a little bit back to gummies and chews, there’s been info about the growth of those launches? I know that Nutrition Integrated reported a 59% increase in the launches of creating gummies in the US and even a 50% increase in the launches of creating gummies in Europe. Do you think that that’s already nearing a plateau, a kind of saturation, or are we still far from that at this stage? Because you say we’re starting from a very low base, at least in the sellout, and at which point will this cause, basically, a price war?
Scott Dicker
So, a lot to unpack there. One, we’re very far from hitting a peak on the standpoint. We’re just at the tip, this is a new trend. You’ll expect to see these different versions coming out and not just gummies and chews. Ready-to-drinks is a big one. You’re going to see a lot of that. You’re going to see powders start to position themselves as more premium, whether it’s from sourcing, purity of sourcing, or adding to other ingredients, whether it’s HMB, protein, collagen, or kind of combining these to make it seem like a premium version as well.Until we see some sort of flattening of growth, I won’t be concerned about hitting the peak. But right now, everyone is trying it. I know a lot of your audience are brands and things like that. I’ll say the same thing that I always say about brands that ask me about protein or fiber. The trends have not peaked, people are still very interested in it, but it’s not the solve-all for everything. There is a large graveyard of brands that thought adding protein to their products was going to be a magic bullet and it didn’t work out for them. While creatine, the ingredient is going to grow and there’s going to be many brands that benefit from it, It’s not just a let’s add creatine in and watch our sales explode, there’s a lot more to it than that.
Matevž Ambrožič
Especially because it’s really, really hard to compete in price, at least at the level of creatine monohydrate powders in a jar, there are plenty of those. And you mentioned that you expect to see some sort of added value being created through sourcing, through specific sources of creatine. We’ve seen, for example, this year or last year, it was not long ago, that The Vitamin Shoppe launched a product that uses Specnova’s NovaQSpheres® technology. I believe it was in January, and this was one of these rare, at the moment, value-creating sources that communicate something other than improved solubility. Because you have the OptiCreatine™, you have the CreaSolv®, and so forth, these brands that communicate merely solubility, and in this one, you have a gradual release pattern that supposedly allows for higher cellular creatine concentration. Do you see any of those already showing up in the sellout data yet? Not that you have to specifically talk about the ones that I mentioned, but added value creatine sources, are they potentially already showing up as a denominator or a determinator of success?
Scott Dicker
I would say that they are already showing up in the innovation standpoint. Innovation, meaning new products entering the market. When they start, I would not say that they are disruptive yet, where they’re gaining significant market share. But it’s so early in the process, I wouldn’t say that they aren’t or they won’t yet. It’s just too early for that to show up. But it’s acting more as a mature category. Creatine was mostly a product. It was a category, but to be a more mature category, you need different formats, you need different versions of it, whether it’s a more natural or premium, it’s already obviously functional. But there are different ways to round out a category to meet consumers where they are, where there’s not everyone’s going to be like you and me and mix our powdered creatine in the morning and have a call and sip on it. Some people want it in a ready-to-drink format, some people still want it in pills, although, my problem was always with creatine pills, you had to take so many of them that it was a little pill fatigue on it, but there are some people who just like the pills. There are different formats where creatine can act as a more mature category, and then you can also get into different flavors, different brands, different channels. It’s not like you just have to go into a specialty store or online for it. You’ll find it in mass, in club, and different grocery stores even. It’s really rounding out and developing. It’s not close to being mature yet, but it’s rounding out and developing into a more mature category.
Matevž Ambrožič
Before we started the call, we both figured out we are actually drinking creatine dissolved in water. And this is, I swear, a coincidence, we did not plan on this. And I asked Scott, what kind is he drinking? I was, I don’t know for what reason, expecting some sort of fancy brand or something like that. But Scott, you said it’s creatine monohydrate, the basic one, kind of let’s say even private label one. How so?
Scott Dicker
Why? Well, so I guess the answer is why. I’ve been taking creatine on and off, but mostly on since I was in high school. The majority of the research has been on creatine monohydrate. It’s by far the most value in terms of price. There’s a whole lot of brands that are trustworthy, it’s not just like buying the cheapest one online. But if you’re buying a reputable brand from a reputable retailer, I usually just go with the regular plain monohydrate. Actually, in this one, I was mixing it with the hydration to go back full circle because I did want some flavor on it. Some of them mix better than others. There’s nothing fancy about it. I do like some of the fancier ones upon occasion, but my go-to is usually just regular old creatine monohydrate.
Matevž Ambrožič
Incidentally, this is what I’m having as well. We both seem to be a little bit traditionalist, but wouldn’t it be ideal for you to have a combined one, electrolytes plus creatine?
Scott Dicker
I don’t know if it’s ideal. But it fits, everything fits routines. CPG products, especially functional products, we find that they really fit routines. And beverages, more than anything, fit into different day parts. I’m sure you have your morning drink, which could be your creatine, it could be your coffee, it could be your pre-workout, whatever it is. You have different drinks that fit in with routines throughout the day. Where creatine as an ingredient could fit into different parts of the day. When I have it with my workout, sometimes I’ll mix it with a hydration product or even a pre-workout, although I know sometimes mixing with caffeine isn’t ideal. But, also, I like the plain powder because I can mix it in my morning smoothie or my post-workout shake. There are different ways to fit it into the daily routine. For me personally, if it was only in one of those formats, I would miss out on the opportunity for different day part routines to incorporate it where it fit into my day for any given day, if that makes sense.
Matevž Ambrožič
It makes sense, yeah, it’s a bit more variable or universal to use, if you have it as a plain source. I guess that’s the same reason why I use it the same way in the end. And it goes to the question of how to formulate a kind of creatine product of the future, let’s say, if a big part of the audience, a big part of the consumers, they prefer kind of a more variable, universally fitting creatine into various parts of the day or various use cases. You have creatine monohydrate as the kind of alpha and omega, really well researched, really few disadvantages to work with. What comes next? Where’s the white space in the creatine segments? If you, Scott, were to be starting a creatine brand or a brand that has a creatine SKU, how would you place it? Where would you find the opportunity and create a successful product?
Scott Dicker
We’ve talked about so many areas of opportunity, there are so many white spaces. Like I mentioned, I’ve been taking creatine since high school. That puts me into a category of familiarity and routine with it already. I mentioned before the different ages and genders. There’s huge growth in a lot of them, but there’s still a lot of white space for people to enter the category or re-enter the category. They will probably be looking to find a day part and part of their routine to incorporate creatine into, if they do enter. The thing I will say about this is the same advice that most brands should get, regardless of category. Understand your consumer, your target audience, where they shop, what they’re looking for, how they discover products, and that is really where the white space opportunity comes for your brand. There will be opportunities for beverages, gummies, electrolyte mixes, and mixes with collagen and colostrum and premium versions, as well as who can give the most value in the lowest price per serving. Transparency, third-party testing, these are all big white space opportunities. They can all work, but they don’t have to work at the expense of these other ones. I don’t foresee unflavored creatine, monohydrate powder going down anytime soon because of the growth of these other formats. The same way where protein, just to use an analogy, continues to be a top driver in mostly every category, whether it’s inherently high protein categories like eggs and yogurt, or it’s added protein to high-carb products throughout the entire store. Those are all growing, and yet despite that, we see protein powder continue to grow in the high single or low double digits every year. This is a core part of the consumer and part of the category. These other areas of growth don’t happen at the expense of protein powder, for example, and the same thing can be true for creatine. When you make your cognitive creatine formulation that hits the consumer looking for that, and it’s creatine, with, let’s say, other nootropics, or it’s the women’s health one that we mentioned, that has unique marketing claims, maybe some formulation alterations. These are more additive to the category than cannibalizing other parts at the moment. There will be a point when we might have a different discussion, but we’re far from that point right now.
Matevž Ambrožič
All right. The bottom line is, because sometimes we’re talking to a lot of brands, and sometimes they even get concerned by the fact that they see so much talk within the industry about creatine or so much hype over it on social media. Quite often, they would get concerned that the window of opportunity is already over, that too many products have already been launched by now, and we’ve picked on it too late. But just to kind of calm down those fears, you think this trend is far from over, the category is far from saturated, and there’s still opportunity for brands to enter, correct
Scott Dicker
The short answer is yes. To refer back to my answer from a different question, it’s not the magic bullet. There will be a large graveyard of products and brands that thought adding creatine was going to just shoot up sales, no matter what. You should know that even before this latest creatine boom, pretty much every active nutrition brand had a creatine product, at least one. It was far from an empty desert of product opportunities there. But that being said, there are plenty of opportunities to position yourselves, to find a good niche, and even to mainstream some of these newer formats.
Matevž Ambrožič
Very good. Since I didn’t get a personal preference from you, I’m just going to try one more time. If you had a Scott Dicker creatine brand, and it wasn’t for you personally, because you just prefer plain creatine monohydrate that you throw into water, combined anyway you want. If you had to build a specific product, would you go for any of the less addressed, or currently less consuming parts of the total demography, you’ve mentioned the aging population? I don’t know how exactly you framed it, but it was 8% only of, let’s say, older consumers consuming it. There’s a smaller share of all launches addressing cognitive health. Would you perhaps target any of those areas, or would you stick to creatine monohydrate, plain and simple?
Scott Dicker
The question, and I’ll always try to give a straight answer, but this one’s not always as straight. I would probably be shooting for upside. Like I said, there are so many plain powders of a commodity ingredient out there. Putting another one in there, not that it can’t be successful, not that it can’t be incremental. I feel like the chances of that being your real hero product and category builder are probably smaller, although there’s also less of a chance that it will be an absolute flop. If you are making a ready-to-drink for cognitive benefits that has all the science and transparency behind it, and it could also help with age-related sarcopenia, for example, that’s probably a very high upside opportunity, which is what I would probably do, if that’s what you’re asking.
Matevž Ambrožič
Okay, very good. That was what I’m asking. We got to be a bit more specific, so I’m satisfied. At SPINS or you personally over the next, let’s say, one to two years, what are the key metrics that you’ll be following to see how the key creating trend and market evolves?
Scott Dicker
I always look at the overall sales, but also on the natural channel and online are usually where you see the trends pop up first. When those start to flatten, you still probably have another year or so where, in conventional, it’s still going to go up. But those are the leading indicators that we’re going to start to see the curve flatten, so to speak. When is it going to act like a more mature category? At some point, it can’t have 75% growth. Looking at that, looking out for the science, looking out for the lab results of a lot of these gummies and beverages, how long can it have as much creatine as it says on the label in some of these beverages. A lot of these things are going to influence the short- and medium-term growth of creatine, but for the year 2026, I expect to have another very strong year.
Matevž Ambrožič
Okay. We’re going to be checking up with you after 26. I hope to see some of these predictions that we made today pan out. Thank you so much, Scott, for taking the time and discussing with me and sharing some of your insights with our audience. I hope we can talk to you again soon, and I thank everybody for listening to this edition of NutraLoop™ podcast, and see you again next time.
Scott Dicker
Thank you so much for having me.
