The May growth figures, a sizeable expansion of small-business lending support, and a supplement market visibly reshaping around weight-loss medication, with our read on what each means for a founder-led brand.
After April’s dip, May’s return to growth leaves the underlying trend intact and gives founder-led brands a slightly firmer backdrop to plan against.
The economy grew by 0.1% in May, the ONS reported on 16 July, recovering the 0.1% fall in April that we noted at the time. Over the three months to May, GDP grew by 0.7% against the previous three months, the sixth consecutive three-month rise, with services the main contributor. Across that quarter services grew 0.7%, construction 1.6%, and production 0.1%.
The useful reading is that the monthly figures are noisier than the trend. April’s fall was the first since October 2025, and May has already reversed it, while the three-month measure has now grown for six periods running. The more relevant caveat for a founder is composition: the growth is services-led, and consumer-facing services rose only 0.5% over the quarter, so the demand most health-opt brands sell into is steadier than it is strong.
The practical move is to treat the economy as growing slowly rather than accelerating, and to keep demand assumptions anchored to that. A plan that reads six quarters of three-month growth as momentum building toward a consumer rebound is likely to run ahead of what the figures support.
If you would find it useful to pressure-test your second-half forecast against this backdrop, a Discovery Call is the right starting point.
Source: ONS, GDP monthly estimate, UK: May 2026, 16 July 2026
For a founder who has heard “no” from a lender, more guaranteed capacity changes what is realistically available to fund growth.
On 12 July, ahead of the Mansion House speech, the Chancellor announced a £6.5bn uplift to the British Business Bank’s Growth Guarantee Scheme, expected to support around 33,000 businesses over four years. The scheme gives lenders a government guarantee on part of each facility, which helps smaller businesses secure term loans, overdrafts and asset finance they might otherwise be refused. Two mechanics also change: some facility terms extend from six to ten years, and the turnover eligibility ceiling rises from £45m to £54m. To date the scheme has delivered £3.7bn through 70 accredited lenders, about 70% of it outside London and the South East.
For a founder-led brand the headline capacity matters less than the access it implies. The scheme is built for businesses that are viable but lack the security or track record a lender wants, and the guarantee is what gets a facility over the line. One part of the wider package is worth noting for health brands in particular: up to £500m of ENABLE Guarantee capacity ringfenced for IP-rich businesses, those whose value sits in brand, formulation or other intangibles rather than physical assets. Many e-commerce health brands fit that description, asset-light but with real IP, and have historically found debt finance harder to price.
The move is not to borrow because finance is available, but to know the routes open to you before you need them. If a growth or working-capital gap is on the horizon, the scheme through an accredited lender is now one of the more accessible options, and the terms are more flexible than they were a week ago.
If finance like this is on your mind, Phoenix can help you weigh whether it fits the plan and get the supporting numbers in order for a conversation with your lender.
Source: British Business Bank, press release, 12 July 2026
The weight-loss drugs are pulling demand out of some supplement categories and straight into others, and which side of that line a brand sits on is becoming a real question.
On 10 July the personalised-nutrition brand Nourished launched a three-gummy creatine range for strength, focus and energy, citing a sharp rise in customer requests over the previous six months. It was the latest in a run of moves: a week earlier Applied Nutrition put a dedicated GLP-1 support range, spanning protein, creatine, hydration and digestion, into 400 Holland & Barrett stores, and the gut-health brand Myota raised a $4.5m Series A for prebiotic fibre it positions as a companion to weight-loss medication. Different products, one current running underneath.
Creatine is the clearest case of an ingredient repositioning. Long a sports-nutrition staple, it is moving into women’s health, cognition and healthy ageing, and part of the pull is GLP-1. A meaningful share of the weight lost on the drugs can be muscle rather than fat, and creatine and protein are increasingly marketed to protect it. Nourished entering a category it had not touched, on the back of its own demand data, is a small sign of how quickly that shift is happening.
The same logic runs through gut health. GLP-1 users often experience digestive side effects, and dietary fibre also supports the body’s own GLP-1 response, which is the space Myota is funding into. Applied Nutrition’s move onto the high street shows the same category stepping from niche into mainstream retail. The signal above any single brand is that demand is migrating from stand-alone weight-management products toward the ones that sit alongside a prescription rather than competing with it.
For a founder the useful question is where a current range sits relative to that shift, and whether the next product decision builds toward it or away from it. A brand in recovery, protein, gut health or cognition is closer to this current than it might assume, and the ones moving early are defining how the companion categories get positioned.
Sources: Inside Food & Drink, 10 July 2026; Grocery Gazette, 2 July 2026; Green Queen, 2 July 2026; Nutrition Insight, 2026
The fastest runners over a long mountain course rarely win with a late surge. They win by holding a pace no one else can, for longer than anyone else can.
The Ultra-Trail di Corsica, the 110-kilometre long course of the Restonica Trail by UTMB, ran on the French island over 9 to 11 July, with organisers moving the start to 2am to get ahead of forecast storms. France’s Aurélien Dunand-Pallaz led for most of it and finished in 14 hours 41 minutes, a course record by nearly four minutes, with the runner-up around fifty minutes behind. On the 70-kilometre race the same weekend, Benjamin Roubiol set a record of his own in 7 hours 10 minutes.
What stands out is not a dramatic move but the absence of one. A margin that size, built across 110 kilometres and 7,200 metres of climbing, comes from running a controlled effort the whole way rather than an attack near the end. The lead was the result of composure held across a long horizon, not a moment of brilliance late on.
That is the version of endurance most useful to a founder. Durable advantage tends to be built the same way, through steady execution against a plan you can actually hold, with the visibility to know you are on pace long before the finish. The runners who set records on Corsica were not gambling on a strong final hour. They had built a base that let them run their own race from the front.
Phoenix works with founders on the same foundation: the KPI tracking and cash visibility that let a business hold its pace over a long season rather than racing to catch up.
A free 30-minute Discovery Call is the place to start. No obligation, no sales pressure.