Haleon, parent company of multivitamin brand Centrum, for instance, is planning to bump up its content pieces on Douyin and increase the number of key opinion leaders for its vitamin, mineral and supplements business.
The company reported double-digit growth in China’s e-commerce channel, which makes up around 40% of its revenue in the country.
“We have a good business on Douyin in China, but we see a bigger opportunity there, and that business for us, by the way, grew 100% in Q1,” CEO Brian McNamara said during the Q&A session after the Q1 financial presentation held on April 29.
“We expect growth in China to accelerate as we build out further capabilities in Douyin through tripling the number of content pieces on the platform and doubling the number of key opinion leaders across VMS,“ added Dawn Allen, chief financial officer and director.
Some of the high-performing vitamin SKUs from Haleon in China include Centrum Daily Kits that target gender- and life-stage needs, and Caltrate for bone health.
In particular, the upgraded versions of Centrum Daily Kits that claim to benefit the body’s metabolism, liver, and cardiovascular health, initially launched on e-commerce platforms, have been “performing well”.
In total, Haleon’s revenue from its VMS business was 414m, which was an organic growth of 1.7% from the same period last year.
In China, e-commerce is outpacing brick-and-mortar pharmacies as the go-to channel for health supplement purchases. Overseas brands are also posing strong competition to local Chinese health supplement brands by selling into China via cross-border e-commerce (CBEC).
As such, China’s homegrown health supplement company BYHEALTH, which has traditionally relied on offline pharmacies for success, is trying to catch up with the shift by focusing on CBEC and Douyin this year, chairman Liang Yunchao said during the release of the company’s FY25 results on March 21.
“In 2026, the company will focus on achieving breakthroughs, driving rapid growth across its traditional e-commerce, interest-based e-commerce, CBEC, and supermarket businesses.”
The effort has already begun with the company expanding its content creation team and building dedicated livestreaming rooms to grow its interest-based e-commerce business since last year.
CBEC, social commerce for novel products
Xiamen Kingdomway, parent company of Doctor’s Best, is also leveraging CBEC platforms like Tmall Global, Amazon, as well as Douyin in marketing products into China.
Notably, these channels could help brands market products containing ingredients that are not yet approved by the Chinese authorities.
For example, Xiamen Kingdomway is selling Doctor’s Best’s ergothioneine and nicotinamide mononucleotide (NMN) supplements to China via Douyin, interest-based e-commerce platforms like Xiaohongshu and CBEC channels.
Interest-based e-commerce also provides more targeted marketing, which increases the likelihood of product purchase - not only in China but also globally, the company said in its FY25 financial results released on April 21.
In FY25, RMB1.01bn (US$148m) or 30.09% of its total revenue came from the online sale of its health supplement products, which was a year-on-year growth of 0.53%. Offline supplement sales, on the other hand, were RMB949.5m (US$138.9m), down 0.82% and contributed 28.2% to total revenue. Its remaining revenue came from its ingredient business, which includes vitamin A, vitamin D3, NMN and pyrroloquinoline quinone (PQQ),
“Interest-based e-commerce, supported by algorithms, accurately captures users’ health needs and consumption preferences, achieving a seamless transition from ‘content seeding’ to ‘purchase conversion’, significantly improving the efficiency of purchase decisions and becoming an important incremental channel for health food sales,” the company said.
This is on top of the platforms’ stronger ability to engage potential consumers and disseminate complex health knowledge in more interesting ways through livestreaming and infographics, said the company.
