GNC CEO: Brands need to step up for specialty retailersGNC CEO: Brands need to step up for specialty retailers

Brand partnership, private label and an October reset are among the items in GNC’s five-point plan to move away from a “Kmart on sale” feel and regain supplement retail position.  

Vendors need to step up to the plate for the specialty market, GNC CEO, Chairman and President Joe Fortunato made clear during the supplement retailer’s second-quarter earnings call July 29.

“The relationship with the vendor has not favored the specialty retailer as much as it used to,” he said.

It’s a refrain heard regularly among independent natural foods and supplement retailers feeling pressure from mass market retail growth into natural, organic and healthy living products.  

“They are going to have to give us specialty offerings like they did before or we are going to continue to move toward what’s made this company successful in the past and that’s more and more acceleration of our own brands in the marketplace,” Fortunato said.

Fortunato spent a thoughtful 76 minutes discussing the chain’s second-quarter 0.2 percent consolidated revenue fall.

The GNC revival plan includes: