Supplement subscriptions have the leakiest first reorder (but investors don’t seem to mind)

Haleon and P&G are reportedly circling the clinical-supplement brand Thorne at a valuation of up to $4 billion, according to Reuters. At that price you’re really buying one belief: that supplement subscribers stick around.

Do they? We went and looked.

Here’s the short version. Supplements have the leakiest first reorder of any consumable category we measured. Only 86.6% of first-time buyers come back for a second order. But the subscribers who clear that first reorder stick around about as well as any other consumable subscriber. The durability is real. It just starts later than you’d think.

What the supplement retention curve actually looks like

The supplement retention curve falls hardest at the very first reorder, then flattens out.

First, what these numbers are. This is order-sequence retention: it follows a group of first-time subscribers and reports the share who go on to complete each successive reorder. The first reorder is the second order overall, the twelfth is the thirteenth. Supplements reorder roughly every 30 days, so a reorder is close to a month and the 12th lands about a year out, a little longer when subscribers skip along the way.

Here’s the curve.

Reorder (approx elapsed)	Supplements retention
1st reorder (about 1 month)	86.6%
2nd (about 2 months)	57.6%
3rd (about 3 months)	33.8%
6th (about 6 months)	9.8%
9th (about 9 months)	3.7%
12th (about 12 months)	1.4%

The shape is the story. The biggest single fall is the very first reorder, and from the third reorder on the curve flattens instead of collapsing. That flattening is what a habit looks like once it forms.

One number needs unpacking: 1.4% of the cohort reaches the 12th reorder. That does not mean only 1.4% of supplement subscribers ever reorder. 86.6% place a second order. The 1.4% is the share still going twelve reorders deep, which is well over a year of continuous monthly shipments. It’s also right-censored, so subscribers who signed up recently haven’t had time to get there yet. A small share that far into the lifecycle is normal. What tells you whether it’s good is the comparison to other verticals.

Is supplement retention really more durable than other consumables?

Supplements start with the lowest first-reorder retention of the five wellness verticals we analyzed, then hold on about as well as any of them deep in the lifecycle.

Vertical	1st reorder	6th	12th
Supplements & Vitamins	86.6%	9.8%	1.4%
Coffee & Tea	99.3%	9.3%	1.3%
Beauty	97.5%	6.6%	0.6%
Health & Wellness	92.9%	9.9%	1.5%
Pet Supplies	96.2%	15.3%	3.1%

Read the first column and supplements look weak. Every other vertical keeps more of its first-time buyers through the second order. Read the last column and the picture flips. The subscriber who was hardest to keep at the start becomes one of the hardest to lose at the end.

Two things keep it honest. Pet subscriptions retain a little better than supplements on the tail, so supplements aren’t the single stickiest category. And beauty reorders more slowly, roughly every 42 days against 30 for the others, so beating beauty at a given reorder number is a conservative comparison. We left food out because its order-sequence curve behaves oddly (its 12th reorder reads higher than its 9th, the fingerprint of gifting and one-time orders) and it isn’t a clean comparator.

The takeaway isn’t that supplements are the stickiest category. It’s that they’re leaky out the gate and durable through the lifecycle. Once a subscriber is convinced the product works, they stay.

Why the tail holds: churn, skips, and processed orders

Of the five wellness verticals we analyzed, supplements carry the second-lowest active-churn rate at 17.3% and the highest skip rate at 6.9%, which is exactly the behavior that keeps a subscriber on the books.

The renewal-cycle data explains why the tail holds up.

Vertical	Process rate	Skip rate	Active-churn rate
Pet Supplies	75.9%	2.7%	15.4%
Supplements & Vitamins	70.4%	6.9%	17.3%
Health & Wellness	69.2%	5.6%	18.3%
Coffee & Tea	70.9%	4.0%	20.7%
Beauty	67.8%	4.7%	20.7%

Supplements sit second only to pet on active churn, at 17.3% of cycles against 20.7% for both coffee and beauty. Three points a cycle sounds small, but it compounds. Picture an 8-figure supplement brand with 50,000 active subscriptions. Three points of monthly active churn is about 1,500 subscribers gone every month, roughly 18,000 a year you have to reacquire just to stand still. Shave even a point off that and it’s real money.

The more telling number is the skip rate. Supplements skip more than any other vertical, 6.9% of cycles, and that’s a feature, not a leak. A subscriber who skips is deferring an order, not canceling it. They’re still there for the next one.

It isn’t a trick of the averages, either. Look only at supplement stores that were already active before the window we measured (the trailing 12 months, cycles from July 2025 to June 2026) and the pattern holds: 70.8% processed, 7.2% skipped, 17.5% active churn. And it isn’t a handful of giant stores carrying the vertical. Across the 1,180 supplement stores with at least 500 renewal cycles, the median store lands at 16.4% active churn, right on the aggregate. Most of this plays out where the subscriber manages their own plan, in the customer portal, which is where a skip either happens cleanly or a cancel does.

What a $4B supplement bet is actually buying

Durability.

That’s what you’re paying for. A supplement subscriber who gets past the first reorder retains about as well as any consumable subscriber out there, on a base that skips instead of quitting. The business you’re buying isn’t fragile. It just takes a little while to prove itself.

What it isn’t buying is a clean first order. Supplements have the leakiest first reorder of any consumable we measured, and that first-order churn is the single most important addressable lever in the business. Fix it and everything downstream compounds. Here’s where the work goes for anyone running a supplement or health-and-wellness brand.

• Onboard for the first reorder. The window before the second order is the one that matters most. Educate on dosing, on what results to expect and by when, and on why finishing the first supply is the point. You’re trying to get to order two, where the habit starts to hold.
• Turn cancels into skips. Supplements already skip more than any peer vertical, so lean into it. Surface pause, skip, and reschedule at the cancel moment, so a lull becomes a deferral instead of a lost subscriber. That is the whole job of cancellation prevention, and it’s how Open Farm cut churn by nearly 29%.
• Time reminders to run-out. With a roughly 30-day cadence, a nudge just before the supply runs out protects the reorder that matters. A well-timed reminder that lets a subscriber adjust or confirm the next order in one tap does more for the first reorder than any discount.

Fix the leak and the durability takes care of itself, because it’s already in the category. We dig into more of these cross-vertical patterns in the Subscription Trend Report.

About this report

These figures come from Recharge platform data covering roughly 1,800 supplement brands over the trailing 12 months. The retention curves follow acquisition cohorts from July 2025 to June 2026 by reorder sequence, so they measure reorders reached rather than calendar time, and recent cohorts only count toward the reorders they’ve had time to reach. The renewal rates cover cycles from July 2025 to June 2026. We compared the five largest wellness and replenishment consumable verticals (supplements, coffee and tea, beauty, health and wellness, and pet supplies) and left food out as a noisy comparator. Every figure is aggregate, at the vertical, cohort, or merchant-distribution level, and no single brand or store is identified. “Supplements & Vitamins” is the store’s own category classification, a stand-in for clinical supplement brands like Thorne, not Thorne itself. The pattern holds across the platform-wide, same-store, and merchant-level cuts.

Frequently asked questions

What’s a good retention rate for a supplement subscription? On Recharge, 86.6% of first-time supplement buyers complete a first reorder, and 1.4% are still reordering twelve orders deep. That first-reorder rate is the lowest of the five wellness verticals we analyzed, but the tail is about as durable as any of them.

Do supplements retain better than coffee or beauty subscriptions? Supplements start weaker at the first reorder, then hold on par with coffee and better than beauty deep in the lifecycle. Pet supplies retain a little better than all of them.

Why do supplement subscribers cancel? The biggest drop is the first reorder, before the habit forms and before the product has had time to prove itself. Subscribers who get past it tend to skip rather than cancel, the highest skip rate of the five verticals at 6.9%.