Supplement knockoffs are eroding consumer trust, forcing brands and retailers to take action against counterfeiters.
The rapidly expanding wellness industry is facing a growing trust crisis as demand for dietary supplements, vitamins and health products surges on marketplaces. That demand has bred countless counterfeit products by sellers exploiting the surge in online shopping. Approximately 74% of consumers report buying counterfeit goods either knowingly or unknowingly,according to a survey by Michigan State University’s A-CAPP Center for Anti-Counterfeiting and Product Protection. Many have fallen for copycat listings for products that imitate originals and are filled with cheap filler ingredients.
This month, online supplement retailer iHerb released a new survey in partnership with YouGov revealing that 54% of online supplement shoppers are concerned about counterfeit products flooding the market. The survey of 2,796 U.S. adults was conducted September 17 through September 21.
iHerb, founded in 1996, started out as a California-based online seller of health supplements, and today sells thousands of products across wellness, beauty and grocery.
iHerb Chief Revenue Officer Hyeyoung Moon told Modern Retail that the company had been aware of counterfeit supplement issues through its international consumers. It found early cross-border success in Asia, where knockoff supplements are more prevalent.
“American consumers have been mostly sheltered and protected from counterfeit, but with the recent rise of marketplaces, anybody can sell anything,” Moon said. The fact that over half of respondents said they’re worried about potentially purchasing counterfeit supplements “came as a bit of a surprise for us,” she said.
In 2025, vitamins, minerals and supplements represented 67% of iHerb’s net sales. To address the growing customer concerns, iHerb decided to examine its supply chain more closely.
Since iHerb was founded, Moon said it has always worked directly with brands and authorized distributors to policy requiring suppliers to provide contract and invoice documentation showing products were purchased directly from brands
“Instead of just trusting that these are authorized distributors, we now ask for actual proof,” said Moon. Only two distributors couldn’t provide authorization documentation. “So we made the decision to stop working with those suppliers.”
Consumer-centric solutions, like supplement verification apps, are alsopopping up to address the issue.
Jordan Glenn, co-founder of supplement tracking app SuppCo, said the supplement industry is facing deep distrust right now because of the sheer noise and number of brands out there. The wellness category’s ongoing explosion has exacerbated these concerns, as trends like creatine andgummy supplements fuel growth.
“A rising tide lifts all boats, but counterfeits bring everything down,” Glenn said. “So it has created problems even for good brands that are putting the money into doing everything right.”
In 2025, SuppCoran over 70 ISO-certified lab tests on 44 of the top-selling supplements on Amazon, which Glenn said is now the largest marketplace for supplements in the U.S. SuppCo found that half of the tested products contained less than 3% of their advertised active ingredient, with over 75% having dupe Alibaba listings.
“Usually the biggest sign is the price,” he said. The rule of thumb is that if it’s too good to be true, Glenn said, it’s probably a fake version of that product. After these findings came out, customers flooded the listings with reviews and comments, which led Amazon to remove nine of the products.
According to an Amazon statement, the company strictly prohibits counterfeit products in its store and has several policies and procedures in place for brands.
Amazon says it has “robust seller and supply chain verification processes and comprehensive proactive controls to prevent counterfeit and noncompliant products from being listed, including required third-party lab testing submitted directly to Amazon for high-risk categories.” This is paired with automated tech that continuously scans products on the marketplace and combines it with expert human investigators to identify counterfeit signals.
In 2025, Amazon says its proactive controls blocked more than 99.9% of suspected infringed listings before a brand ever had to find and report them.
In lab tests, Glenn said SuppCo did not find a single product with contaminants, such as being overly high in heavy metals.
But what it found was that products had almost no active ingredients their labels were claiming. “They’re essentially capsules full of rice flour,” he said. “So it’s less of a case of these products being physically harmful, and more so that the consumer is wasting their money.”
In turn, the fake supplements create a competitive advantage for their sellers over the authentic brands. Some companies, like supplement brand Now, arepurchasing and conducting independent testing on their own products, alongside competitors’ products, to demonstrate their authenticity.
Laura Brodie, chief growth officer at Ritual, said that while the company hasn’t encountered fake versions of its supplements online, the problem is “extremely top of mind for us.”
Brodie added that general consumer distrust of what they’re buying online means brands have to communicate their availability across channels.
“On marketplaces like Amazon, one of the most important things is for the customer to look closely at the seller’s name,” she said. If a brand suspects an unauthorized seller is copying its assets, it can flag counterfeit products to Amazon relatively quickly.
“For Ritual’s products, specifically, one of the areas we are very focused on is also our product technology,” Brodie said.
For example, Ritual’s women’s multivitamins consist of transparent capsules featuring separated dry ingredients and oil. While the R&D strategy wasn’t adopted intentionally to combat copycats, Brodie said it has become a helpful tool customers can use to verify the authenticity of Ritual products. “It’s very specific technology that you see through the clear bottle and is not something a counterfeiter would be able to accomplish,” Brodie said.
Glenn said that while consumers can do their own research and marketplaces will further crack down on knockoffs, he expects people will continue to question whether the supplements they’re buying online are fake.
“There is still this heavy level of skepticism in whether they can trust the efficacy of a product,” he said.
