When it comes to out of stocks and delays, I can promise that no one wants things in stock more than the brands that have money tied up in the ingredients and that are losing money every day they are out of stock.
2025 was the year from hell supply chain wise in this industry. There's no better way to put it.
The tariff situation didn't just increase costs - it made many things completely unavailable, especially at the height of it because no one was going to import raws that cost up to 120% to 140% more than normal. Then when things with China started to I wouldn't say normalize, but at least become a new normal, the same thing then started with India and disrupted the supply chain with herbals.
But it wasn't just that - in addition to the raw material shortages and increased costs and some branded ingredients not even being available, it led to capsule shortages especially on veg capsules and major capsule price increases. Things that used to would have cleared Customs in days was taking months. And as things started to get back to somewhat normal, testing labs became backed up and things that would have had results back on in a week were/are taking up to 3 weeks.
There are so many possible delays that can happen, especially when using unique ingredients. That's a big reason that large brands stick with simple and easy to get ingredients is to streamline things and not run into issues like that. And I know many brands even with simple things had more out of stocks in 2025 than even during Covid.
What got this discussion going in this thread was X-Gels, so I'll use that as an example:
- We have money tied up in several hundred thousand X-Gels softgels.
- I've mentioned before that when being an FDA registered GMP company, a lot goes into testing - especially with unique ingredients.
- Softgels made - so sent for testing (results back in less than 10 days)
- Softgels pass testing so they get sent to cm to bottle.
- This sounds redundant and it is, but in the consumers favor - since cm isn't making them, they have to send them out for testing too.
- Lab is backed up and takes over 3 weeks to get results.
- We were changing bottle styles for X-Gels - so after an unanticipated 3 week delay (explained above), the dang bottles still aren't in and causes another few weeks delay.
^^^ Keep in mind, all the time this is going on, the softgels have already been paid for - so no one wants it to turn into finished product more than us.
I explain this process so that anyone interested in it can see an example of how several seemingly simple delays can add up to an almost 2 month delay that a brand would not know to anticipate - which is why when talking ETA's I always say that we cannot make guarantees.
The BASIS delay is a story I'll post when it's in, but it was surreal.
