NBTY Buys 350 Stores In The U.K.

Do you shop at Vitamin Shoppe, Vitamin World or GNC? Well the company that owns “Vitamin World” is called “NBTY” and they are absolutely massive. In fact, back in 2003 they plucked a small piece of GNC when they bought all the GNC stores in the U.K and some in Germany! The acquisition was relatively small: NBTY paid Numico $12 million for 49 GNC stores in the U.K. and 7 in Germany. They also bought store chain Holland & Barrett a few years ago (by outbidding GNC) to get a further foothold on the supplement market in the U.K. Well to solidify their dominance over the pond they’ve now just bought “Julian Graves” which is a chain of 350 food and confectionary stores in the U.K. The cost of the purchase was approximately $25 million USD. One has to wonder if NBTY’s next purchase will be GNC’s U.S. store chain?