Indies Spearhead Organic Growth - New Natural Business

Health Stores UK: Indies spearhead organic growth

Len Glenville
Chair, Health Stores UK

It was heartening to learn last month that it was independent retailers who spearheaded an exceptional year of sales growth for organic products in 2024. In fact, Indies delivered a standout +9% growth of organic sales across all categories – food, wellbeing, beauty, and household.

The figure is one of the headline findings from the 2025 edition of the Soil Association Organic Market Report. The organic charity says that the most common growth driver in the indie channel was retailers’ belief that organic aligns with consumer concerns. Which, of course, makes a lot of sense as health store shoppers generally have a much higher awareness of the benefits of organic and are more likely to buy into the values that underpin it.

Day in, day out, indies show that they are truly committed to those values – and consumers have taken notice. The fact that independents offer a choice and depth of range of organic that the supermarkets can’t compete with, seals the deal for many discerning shoppers.

Interestingly, it is the personal health benefits of organic (followed by animal welfare and pesticide-free) that are now the single biggest motivation to purchase, which plays perfectly to the health store trade’s strengths.

Strikingly, 90% of indie health stores polled in 2024 by the Soil Association anticipate further growth of organic sales in 2025 (compared to 50% in 2023), a further indicator of the opportunity for our channel. Watch out for information about upcoming initiatives such as Wake Up To Organic and Organic September that we can use to convert more of those organic shoppers into health store regulars!

Thank you Avril!
Committee members and industry colleagues and friends have sent messages of thanks and appreciation to Avril McCracken who has retired after 15 years as association Administrator. Susie Russell-Smith of Cornerweighs called Avril “the poster girl for our association who helped make it what it is today”, while Cheryl Thallon at Sheaf Street Health Store thanked her for “many years of hard work, professionalism and many, many kindnesses”. Joanne Hill of Amaranth thanked Avril for “bringing us all together” and tenaciously tracking down sometimes elusive retailers for Committee meetings!

As Chair, and with Deputy Chair Melanie Beard, I also want to thank Avril for her hard work and dedication over the years and for being a pillar of our organisation. And we both want to say how much we appreciate the personal support Avril has given us since we took up our roles – thank you so much, Avril. We have collected together all our messages in a ‘video card’ which we will be presenting to Avril with a retirement gift to show our appreciation for her fantastic contribution to Health Stores UK.

Fresh opportunities
We are currently working with our Head of Business Development, Dave Christie, on a number of initiatives that will help us boost the impact of the work we do for our members. For example, we are actively looking for five stores – outside of the Committee – to become advisory partners, so we can run through new ideas with them, and bring in some fresh thinking on issues and opportunities we might otherwise miss.

And we’re really interested to hear from both brands and stores who have ideas and topics for our online Shop Talk sessions. Looking at recent feedback, it could be that we move to a podcast format in future, which we believe would be a really effective and engaging way to communicate with members and the wider health food community. Check our website - www.healthstores.uk - for latest updates.

Dave Christie is the first point of contact at Health Stores UK for Membership enquiries and for brands interested in working with us to grow the independent health food channel. Get in touch directly with Dave at [email protected]