General Nutrition Center: Presently The Largest Health Related Retail Outlet In The World

General Nutrition Center or GNC is a commercial enterprise working out of the American city of Pittsburgh that has as its aim retail selling of health as well as nutrition based products and also drugs that can be sourced over the counter, while it also deals with foods and even food supplements that are sold all over the world through stores that bear the brand name GNC.

Name Changed From Lackzoom To GNC

General Nutrition Center originally began its business venture in the year 1935 in the steel city of Pittsburgh and the owner of the enterprise was a person named David Shakarian who initially began doing business with a number of health food stores that were at the time known as Lackzoom. It was only in the sixties that the name was changed to General Nutrition Center and from then onward till the present it has grown to become the largest health products retail outfit anywhere in the world.

As late as December 2003, General Nutrition Center was offloaded by its owner of the time Royal Numico to another company known as Apollo Management that in turn sold the company in March of this year to two other private equity firms known as Ares Management LLC and also to Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan. However, all through these changes in ownership, the company itself has managed to maintain its base in Pittsburgh.

If you were to visit a General Nutrition Center retail store, you would find many products that dealt with weight loss as well as body building and even nutritional supplements in their own brand name as well as in third party brand names. You can also find many a book on health and fitness at these retail outlets and also magazines and even tools of the trade, so to speak.

There is also a big presence of General Nutrition Center in Australia under the name of GNC LiveWell with as many as, it is believed, forty-one such stores in Brisbane, Sydney and also Melbourne though in January of this year, there was a key rebrand of these stores and they are now following a new means of merchandising their products using front glass display cabinets that feature LCD Plasma TVs with displays of special products in a bid to entice customers to enter the stores and sample some of the products being sold. These stores look to be made of wood and there are racks and gondolas made from wood as well while at the back are fridges that contain cool beverages and all sales are affected at sales desk located in the center of the stores.