Enquirer Consulting Group

Reachable Buyer Map

Prepared for Melissa Ganchev · Universal Nutrition · August 2026
Sports nutrition gets sold twice: once to the person who trains, and once to the buyer who decides whether the line gets space. This map is the second sale, in the US. The segments where wholesale decisions are made, who signs inside each one, and roughly how many of them there are.
Specialty supplement and health retail
The most category-focused buying on the page. Chains decide centrally against a review calendar, independents decide in a single conversation with the owner, and the two behave like different markets even though they carry the same categories.
Who signs: category buyer, merchandising director, and the owner-operator at independents.
8,000 to 9,500
US establishments registered as supplement and health food retailers; the chain-owned share buys centrally, the rest store by store
Gyms, health clubs and training facilities
The largest count on the page and the one nobody works properly, because nothing public records which sites run a retail counter. Decisions are fast, orders are small, and the same owner often controls several locations.
Who signs: club owner, general manager, retail or pro shop manager, and the regional operator on multi-site groups.
33,000 to 38,000
US fitness and recreational sports establishments; which of them sell product on site is not recorded anywhere public and is established one at a time
Grocery, drug and mass retail chains
Few companies, enormous volume, and a calendar you have to be in front of months ahead. Category managers here rotate between categories, and a new one almost always revisits the assortment they inherited.
Who signs: category manager for health and wellness, VP of merchandising, and the supplement buyer.
Roughly 900 to 1,200 chains
US grocery, drug and convenience companies operating multiple locations; buying power concentrates in a small number of seats
Wholesale distributors and cash and carry
The layer that reaches the retailers nobody can call individually, and the layer most likely to already carry a competing line. Getting carried is one conversation with a purchasing seat rather than a campaign.
Who signs: purchasing director, category lead, and the principal at owner-run distributors.
4,000 to 5,000
US establishments in health product, vitamin and grocery wholesale
Online retailers and marketplace sellers
Defined by how they sell rather than what they sell, so this group cuts across every segment above. No shelf constraint, which makes assortment decisions quick, and a heavy reliance on whichever brand answers the email first.
Who signs: merchandising lead, category manager, founder, and the head of buying at larger sellers.
1,400 to 1,800
US employers registered as electronic shopping and mail order sellers; a further layer trades only on marketplaces and is not registered separately
International importers and distributors
The other market for a US brand in this category, and a genuinely separate one. Each country has a small number of importers who control category access, and they are found market by market rather than from a list. Stated plainly, no public source enumerates them together.
Who signs: the importer principal, the category or brand manager, and the regulatory lead who clears the label.
No single register
importers are recorded country by country where they are recorded at all; reached by name and by market, one at a time

Where the openings are

1
The buyer is a seat, and seats move. Category buyer, merchandising director, club retail manager. Those roles turn over often, and a new buyer almost always revisits the assortment they inherited. A channel built on named roles catches that week. A channel built on relationships hears about it after the reset.
2
The biggest count on the page has no list. Nothing public records which gyms and training facilities sell product on site, so anyone buying a list gets every fitness site in the country and no way to sort them. Working that segment properly takes identification rather than purchase, which is exactly why it stays open.
3
Two buying motions, and they need different timing. Chains buy against a review calendar and have to be reached months before it opens. Independents, gyms and distributors decide in a single conversation, any week of the year. One channel timed for one of those motions quietly misses the other.
4
Consumer demand and shelf access are different problems. A brand can be well known to the people who train and still be absent from most of the doors above, because the buyer behind each of those doors never heard from anyone. Reaching a named buyer across several thousand of them is mechanical work, and it is the part a brand team almost never staffs.
Built from public federal registry data covering registered US establishments, current to the most recent published year. Counts are banded deliberately. They describe establishments rather than companies, so a multi-site operator can appear more than once, and category codes are self-reported. Owner-only businesses are not published in this data, and importers outside the US are described rather than counted. It describes the market rather than your business, and there is nothing to buy at the end of it.
ENQUIRER CONSULTING GROUP
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