WPIC Marketing + Technologies Logo
  • Careers at WPIC
Let's talk

How Omega-3 Supplement Growth Is Being Driven in China

Published on February 9, 2026

How Omega-3 Supplement Growth Is Being Driven in China

Many Western supplement brands start the China omega-3 conversation in the wrong place. The same questions keep circling: Do consumers in China care about fish oil? Is awareness high enough? Has the category already peaked? Sensible questions on paper. Outdated ones in practice.

WPIC’s Discripto® data tells a different story. China’s online supplement sales revenue reached 17.6 billion RMB (about US$2.54 billion) in 2025 after more than a decade of double-digit growth. Within that sits omega-3 fish oil, now a US$1.03 billion category in crossborder e-commerce alone, growing roughly 25% year-on-year in 2025. That is not the profile of a market slowing down.

Growth, however, has not made outcomes predictable. Demand keeps rising, yet brand performance remains uneven. Some operators accelerate. Others stall. The difference rarely comes down to who has the purest formulation or the prettiest softgel.

WPIC’s Discripto® data keeps pointing to a simpler reality. In China’s omega-3 category, results are shaped by where products are sold, how they are priced, and when brands activate new channels. That is where competition actually happens.

Overview:

China’s Omega-3 Category Is Growing Through Crossborder Channels

Ask most Western supplement brands how they plan to expand their omega-3 business in China and you will usually hear about brand storytelling, pristine ingredient sourcing, or capsule purity. Worthwhile topics, certainly. Yet WPIC’s Discripto® data keeps pointing somewhere else. In China, omega-3 growth is channel-led.

Crossborder e-commerce has taken the lead. Platforms such as Tmall Global, JD Worldwide, and Douyin now generate the bulk of new demand, with crossborder health supplements growing 27.3% year-on-year in 2025.

Within that ecosystem, Tmall Global holds roughly 57% of the omega-3 market, making it the primary volume engine for imported fish oil supplements. Douyin, meanwhile, is the fastest mover, growing 65.9% year-on-year in 2025 and reshaping how consumers evaluate price, value, and purchase decisions around omega-3.

Discripto® data shows a consistent pattern. Brands that entered emerging channels early built momentum. Brands that waited for certainty arrived to a much steeper climb, regardless of positioning or formulation quality.

Timing behaves like compound interest. Early beats clever. Early beats polished. Early beats elaborate storytelling about fish.

This does not make any single platform the universal answer. The broader takeaway is simpler. China’s omega-3 growth follows where products live online and how quickly brands activate those channels. In a channel-led market, treating channel strategy as optional creates disadvantages that compound and become expensive to unwind.

How Omega-3 Supplements Actually Sell in China

Once you zoom to SKU level, WPIC’s Discripto® data shows the omega-3 category behaving with far more predictability than many Western supplement brands assume. Demand does not scatter randomly across platforms. It clusters into clear consumer segments with consistent purchase logic.

Adult demand clusters around high-concentration fish oil

Adult omega-3 supplements on Tmall Global have nearly doubled over the past 3 years and now sit at roughly US$369.7 million in 2025. Growth has concentrated around high-concentration fish oil, defined as more than 85% omega-3 content per softgel. These products now account for the majority of adult sales.

Price expectations have tightened alongside that shift. High-concentration SKUs that scale tend to cluster around US$0.90 to US$1.20 per day. That range reflects a balance between perceived efficacy and daily repeat usage. Consumers are not racing toward the lowest price. They are choosing a range they can justify over months of continuous use.

Sustained usage is how the category grows.

Kids and teen omega-3 grows faster on DHA-led outcomes

Running alongside adult demand is the kids and teen omega-3 segment, which is expanding even faster. The category has reached roughly US$74.5 million and is growing at 34.8% year-on-year in 2025.

Purchase behaviour in this segment is unusually focused. WPIC’s Discripto® data shows sales tied closely to cognitive and academic outcomes, with DHA-first formulations capturing most of the wallet share. Parents are not buying vague health promises. They are buying the possibility of better focus and calmer homework sessions. Outcome first. Formulation second.

The Rise of Nordic Brands in China - Fjorda Tmall Livestream
Livestreaming during Tmall Global Live Relay event for China's 618 Shopping Festival

Stack the data together and the pattern becomes clear. Chinese consumers are not buying omega-3 supplements as generic wellness products. They are buying specific functions at price points that make daily use realistic.

Adult buyers signal outcomes through concentration. Parents signal outcomes through DHA. The signals repeat often enough that the category stops looking unpredictable and starts looking mature.

Why Some Omega-3 Brands Scale in China While Others Plateau

The performance split between omega-3 brands becomes clearer once product data is viewed alongside how companies actually operate. The gap is rarely about who makes the purest fish oil. More often, it comes down to how brands run their China business.

WPIC’s Discripto® benchmarking across leading omega-3 brands keeps surfacing the same playbook among those that scale.

They tend to:

  • Enter emerging channels early rather than waiting for certainty
  • Keep SKU architecture disciplined instead of letting portfolios balloon
  • Price within the daily tolerance consumers are willing to sustain
  • Maintain steady visibility on content platforms instead of appearing sporadically and hoping for momentum

Read that list again because the pattern repeats. Early beats hesitant. Disciplined beats sprawling. Steady beats heroic. Consistent beats occasional.

The contrast sits with the brands that plateau. Many arrive with polished formulations and confident premium positioning, yet growth slows anyway. In these cases, the stall aligns more closely with delayed channel expansion, fragmented assortments, or pricing that never settles into a range consumers can live with day after day. The product is rarely the weak link. The sequencing is.

None of this suggests a closed or saturated market. The gap in performance is being written through operational decisions rather than consumer rejection. Buyers have not stopped buying fish oil. They are rewarding the brands that make purchasing simple, repeat usage natural, and value easy to understand.

The Strategic Question Facing Omega-3 Brands In China

China’s omega-3 category continues to add buyers through crossborder channels. The twist is that growth has become selective. The market rewards brands that execute with intent and leaves the hesitant behind.

Channel timing matters. Pricing tolerance sits in a narrow band. Consumers buy functional outcomes rather than generic wellness. Brands that align to these realities scale. Brands that import assumptions from elsewhere tend to stall.

So the strategic question is no longer whether China represents an opportunity. The real question is whether omega-3 brands are equipped to operate according to how the market actually works.

WPIC Commerce Intelligence - social
WPIC Commerce Intelligence dashboard

This is where WPIC comes in.

We operate and grow global brands across Asia and manage the commercial, operational, and technical layers required to build and scale in China. WPIC Commerce Intelligence provides the data that guides pricing, channel timing, and SKU sequencing. It is the same approach omega-3 brands such as Nordic Naturals and Fjorda have used to expand through China’s crossborder ecosystem and sustain momentum after launch.

For omega-3 brands evaluating their position or planning their next stage of growth, WPIC provides the capability and intelligence needed to compete with clarity.

Latest related articles

3 Reasons Health Supplement Brands Are Winning (or Losing) in China

January 30, 2026

How Crossborder E-commerce in China Actually Works

August 12, 2025

Jake’s Take: 80 Million Daily Orders Say This Is the Future

July 14, 2025

Get content like this in your inbox.

Subscribe