Company: NGVC
Filing Date: 2025-12-11
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0001437749-25-037556
Chunk: 790

Company: Natural Grocers by Vitamin Cottage, Inc.
Filing Date: 2025-12-11
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 1
Chunk 790
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 of building and maintaining a strong immune system to mitigate health risks;

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			an aging United States population seeking to support healthy aging;

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Table of Contents

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			heightened consumer awareness about the importance of food quality and a desire to avoid toxic residues, hormones, growth promoters, artificial ingredients, and genetically engineered ingredients in foods;

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			concerns regarding antibiotic resistance caused by industrial livestock production practices;

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			growing consumer concerns over the use of harmful chemical additives in body care and household cleaning supplies;

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			well-established natural and organic brands, which generate additional industry awareness and credibility with consumers;

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			the growth in the number of consumers with unique dietary requirements as a result of allergies, chemical sensitivities, auto-immune disorders and other conditions; and

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			concerns about the cumulative environmental impact of relying on non-renewable resources and the effects on the global climate of carbon release from conventional agriculture.

Our Competitive Strengths

We believe we are well-positioned to capitalize on favorable natural and organic grocery and dietary supplement industry dynamics as a result of the following competitive strengths:

Strict focus on high-quality natural and organic grocery products and dietary supplements. We offer high-quality products and brands, including an extensive selection of widely recognized natural and organic food, dietary supplements, body care products, pet care products and books. We offer our customers an average of approximately 20,000 Stock Keeping Units (SKUs) of natural and organic products per comparable store (stores open for 13 months or longer), including an average of approximately 6,500 SKUs of dietary supplements. We believe our broad product offering enables our customers to shop our stores for substantially all of their grocery and dietary supplement purchases. In our grocery departments, we only sell USDA certified organic produce and do not approve for sale grocery products that are known to contain artificial flavors, preservatives or sweeteners, synthetic colors, or partially hydrogenated or hydrogenated oils. In addition, we only sell pasture-raised, non-confinement dairy products, free-range eggs (i.e., from chickens that are not only cage-free but also provided with sufficient space to move) and humanely and sustainably sourced meats, fish and seafood (our product standards do not allow meat from animals known to have been treated with antibiotics, hormones or growth promoters, or fed animal by-products). Consistent with this strategy, our product selection does not include items that do not meet our