Health supplements defy historic retail slump as coronavirus spurs sales of immunity boosters in Hong Kong

Health and beauty care retailer AS Watson says that even though it was not immune to the general retail slump, sales of vitamins and supplements bucked the trend

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Customers check out health and nutritional supplements at a personal care retailer in Hong Kong. Photo: Dickson Lee

Published: 12:05pm, 11 May 2020Updated: 10:36pm, 11 May 2020

The coronavirus pandemic may have triggered the worst retail slump in decades in Hong Kong, but sales of health supplements have defied the downturn as consumers look to boost their immunity to avoid contracting the deadly disease.

Sales of vitamins and supplements marketed to consumers as helping the body strengthen its defences against illnesses have soared, according to AS Watson Group, one of the city’s biggest healthy and beauty products retailers.

“While Hong Kong’s retail market has been hit by the pandemic and we [too] are not immune to the impact, [but] within the immunity boosting vitamins subcategory, such as vitamin C, we saw first quarter sales jump over 40-fold year on year,” said Samuel Lee, managing director of Watsons Hong Kong, a unit of AS Watson Group, adding overall online sales more than quadrupled in the quarter.

This is in sharp contrast to Hong Kong’s retail sales in the first quarter, which fell by 36.9 per cent, the deepest year on year decline on record. This comes as the city remains mired in a recession. The economy contracted by 8.9 per cent in the first quarter of this year, the worst on record, having been hit hard by months of anti-government protests, a trade war between the US and China and the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

Samuel Lee, managing director of Watsons Hong Kong, a unit of AS Watson Group, says sales of health supplements have soared amid the Covid-19 pandemic. Photo: Dickson Lee

Health supplement is one of the major product categories of AS Watson, which operates a chain of 15,700 Watsons stores in 25 markets and is controlled by tycoon Li Ka-shing’s conglomerate CK Hutchison.