Retail Focus - Sports Nutrition

James Dobell has made traditional health foods and sports nutrition into a winning combination

I used to work in our family store, Armstrong’s Health Store in Hanley, so my background is in traditional health food retailing. I wanted to combine selling traditional health food supplements with fitness and sports nutrition, but on a larger scale. It seemed like this wasn’t a thing that anyone was really doing, and I felt that there was a real gap in the market. There’s definitely a growing market in sports nutrition and fitness. You imagine young lads who want to get muscley, but it’s actually all kinds of different people, men and women, and all different ages, who are interested in fitness and nutrition these days. We are not a bodybuilding shop, I was very keen to avoid being pigeonholed in that way and ensure that people who want to buy more mainstream supplements and wholefoods would still feel welcome to shop here.