What I am about to tell you is not going to make me a very popular person with many supplement manufacturers. In fact, some of them are going to be down right pissed off at me. On the other hand, some of them are going to be happy someone spilled the beans and told the truth. Finally, some of them will be totally unaware of this information and will be shocked when they read it. Basically, I fully expect this article to cause a sh*% storm that will reverberate throughout the supplement industry.
The only people who I know are going to be happy about this article is the consumer, but I am getting ahead of myself. As we all know, creatine is one of the best bodybuilding supplements ever discovered. It increases strength, lean body mass, and, to a lesser extent, endurance. If that were not enough, it’s relatively cheap to boot! What more could we ask for from a supplement? When creatine was first introduced it was sort of pricey, but no one really cared because it worked so well. As time went on and more companies began selling creatine, the inevitable price war began and prices came down. At that point creatine was only being produced by a few companies, so creatine was basically creatine and the price was the only real consideration. As is typical of the market place, once creatine became big business, several new manufacturers popped up and it became no longer a price war as much as a quality war. The expression “creatine is creatine” no longer holds true. More on that shortly. At this time there are probably four-five companies large enough to mass produce creatine for the sports nutrition market. These companies in turn sell their product in huge bulk amounts to various distributors around the world. As far as the mass producers are concerned, there is a large German company, two companies out of China, and two in the United States. Though there are various other companies, for this article we will basically concern ourselves with these five major producers which probably comprise 80-90% of the creatine production market.