Retailer roundtable part 4:
How natural health retailers are creating collaborative partnerships to boost sales
By Alexa Everett
Following a successful debut at CHFA NOW Vancouver in 2024, the Retailer Roundtable—hosted by Bruce W. Cole, founder and former editor of CNHR—returned to the trade show and was met with an overwhelming response from retailers.
At the 2025 CHFA NOW show, retailers were encouraged to participate and share their experiences in an idea exchange during a retailer roundtable.
Attending retailers were split into five groups, who were each asked a question about the following pressing issues impacting the natural health retail industry: navigating tariffs and supply chain challenges, enhancing customer experience to drive sales, building and motivating high-performing teams, creating collaborative partnerships to boost growth, and innovating and adapting in a changing market.
In the fourth installment of the 2025 roundtable series, we’re sharing insights from retailers on how they identify and structure successful partnerships that drive sales, increase brand visibility, and provide mutual value.
Driving desire through exclusivity
An article by The University of Chicago Booth School of Business reported that consumers may be willing to pay 50 percent more for exclusive goods. In fact, exclusivity was the first tactic roundtable participants shared when discussing strategies to create collaborative partnerships and boost sales.
“Try to gain exclusivity with certain local suppliers,” Jordan Dolson from Legacy Greens in Kitchener, Ontario shared from her roundtable team’s conclusions. “Being the main mover of a product or brand that’s newly launched in the area can attract customers to your store.
“I’ve done it with my store but am usually hesitant because I don’t want to impede the growth of a new business,” she continued. “It can really work if you incentivize them with a lower margin or higher volume, though.”
“I’ve heard people say that these new products or brands eventually move beyond their store, but that at least they had the chance to bask in the glory of no one having seen the product before,” added Bruce. “I think that’s always been one of the hallmarks of a health food store: being new and cutting edge.”
This sentiment carried over into other ideas attendees shared, including co-packing arrangements and partnering with brands to pair customer education with product discounts.
Jordan also emphasized the importance of reaching customers through different distribution channels and tapping into areas of growing demand.
“We’ve noticed an increasing appetite for prepared food, so we wanted to bring people into the store by with easy grab-n-go meals,” she said. “We teamed up with a Jamaican patty pop-up, because once people step into your store, they’re more likely to buy other products as well.”
Fostering community engagement [SUBHEAD]
While many roundtable participants agreed that online delivery trends have continued post-COVID, they’ve also noticed that people are in search of community. The solution? Meet that need with meaningful engagement with the larger community.
One manager operating in a downtown location explained, “Our area has a lot of activities like street fairs, and we’re active in those because being involved really helps. It’s really important that we’re out there and our faces are being seen.” Another retailer shared that they include poetry from children in the area with every purchase from their store. “It’s a cool touchpoint for customers, it connects the kids with their community, and now their families are buying from us to get their child’s poetry in their order,” the speaker said.
For Bruce, the ways in which he’s seen stores engage with their communities are endless. “There was a store that did community dog washes out of good will. I thought it was brilliant,” he said about Foodsmiths Natural Food Store in Perth, Ontario. Even though the initiative didn’t involve selling a product, retailers agreed on the key takeaway: it’s about being community-oriented.
As the roundtable discussion wound down, the room chuckled along with another participant recounting a free pancake breakfast event they had hosted: “We had a line down the block for three hours straight, and we lost tons of profit on the ingredients,” they said. “But it was phenomenal.”
One retailer captured the sentiment of community engagement best: “There are intangible benefits. It’s good for the community and it’s great for business. Giving back should be part of everyone’s underlying initiatives.”
In the next issue: How do natural health store owners create innovation and adaptability in a changing market?