Week ending 5 June 2026

Welcome to this week’s edition. Three developments worth a founder’s attention, with our read on what they mean.

OECD warns of the steepest unemployment rise in the G7, even as it nudges UK growth up

For founders, the headline number is not the unemployment rate but what it signals about the cost of employing people through the rest of the year.

The OECD, the Paris-based research body that advises 38 member governments on economic policy, published its latest Economic Outlook on 3 June. It projects UK unemployment climbing to 5.5% in 2026, up from 4.8% in 2025, the fastest rise of any G7 economy. It points to weakening labour demand in sectors most exposed to the higher National Living Wage and increased employer National Insurance, with firms reporting paused hiring and reduced headcount. The jobless rate already sits at 5.0%, with vacancies at a five-year low.

The picture is not uniformly negative: the OECD raised its 2026 UK growth forecast to 0.9%, from 0.7%. But it also flagged the UK as sharing the G7’s highest inflation rate this year at 3.7%, driven by the energy shock from the Iran conflict and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, which is also disrupting fertiliser shipments and may feed into food prices.

For founders, this is a labour-cost story before a growth story. A rising jobless rate eventually loosens a tight hiring market, but the immediate pressure is on the cost side: wage floors, employer NI, and food and energy inflation working into the cost base. The businesses that handle it well treat people cost as a planned, modelled line rather than a number that moves on them.

Phoenix can help model the people-cost and margin implications against your plan. A Discovery Call is a good place to start.

Questions worth revisiting

• Is your 2026 headcount plan modelled against the higher employer NI and National Living Wage costs, or built on last year’s assumptions?
• If hiring conditions loosen later in the year, are you positioned to reach talent you couldn’t before?
• How exposed is your cost base to the food and energy pass-through the OECD is flagging?

Source: OECD UK Economic Snapshot

UK manufacturing hits a four-year high, but input costs are rising at the fastest pace since 2022

A strong manufacturing figure carries a warning underneath it, and for any brand with a physical product the warning is the part that matters.

The S&P Global UK Manufacturing PMI rose to 53.9 in May, its highest since May 2022 and a seventh straight month of expansion. On the surface, a recovery: output and new orders both grew. Underneath, a pricing warning. Input cost inflation hit its fastest pace in nearly four years, and selling prices rose at the quickest rate since November 2022, with manufacturers citing higher costs for chemicals, energy, metals, packaging and freight, alongside labour, taxes and tariffs.

There is a wrinkle in the strong headline. Some of the demand was precautionary, with customers front-loading orders to get ahead of expected price rises and supply disruption, much of it tied to the Strait of Hormuz closure. Growth borrowed from later in the year is not durable demand.

For health-optimisation brands with physical products, this is the supply chain saying what the inflation data will confirm in a month or two. If your suppliers are absorbing input-cost rises now, expect them to reach your cost of goods. The brands that hold margin through a period like this see the pass-through coming and plan pricing and purchasing around it, rather than reacting once it lands.

Worth a conversation if your cost of goods has moved this year and your pricing has not yet caught up.

Source: S&P Global UK Manufacturing PMI, May 2026

Challenger supplement brands keep taking share from the incumbents

The supplements market is opening up for smaller brands, but the opportunity rewards the ones who understand the difference between growth and profitable growth.

Mintel, a market research firm whose UK consumer and category data is widely cited across the sector, reports in its 2026 innovation review that the combined share of the top five vitamins and supplements brands has eased from around 44% to 40% in recent years, with smaller players the standout performers. The category is also skewing young: Mintel finds use of vitamins, minerals and supplements (VMS) runs at 83% among under-35s, against 65% for the over-55s. And healthy ageing is now a mainstream pull, with 44% of UK adults saying they are interested in supplements that support it.

A favourable backdrop for founder-led brands, but not a free pass. Taking share in a fragmenting category means winning on positioning, format and trust rather than shelf dominance. Consumers are increasingly assembling their own routines around specific need-states, which rewards brands that fit a clear role over those trying to be everything.

The financial discipline behind this matters more than it looks. Challenger growth is usually expensive growth. Acquisition costs in supplements have risen sharply, and a brand can grow revenue while quietly eroding contribution margin. The ones that convert category tailwind into a durable business track profitability by product and channel, not just top line.

Phoenix works with health-optimisation founders to map profitability by product, channel and customer, so growth decisions rest on contribution rather than revenue alone. If that view isn’t clear in your business, it’s worth a conversation.

Source: Mintel, A Year of Innovation in Vitamins, Minerals and Supplements 2026

A second-fastest time at Mohican, and the case for knowing your own course

The endurance events that reward steady management over raw pace often map neatly onto how the best-run businesses use their numbers.

At the Mohican Trail 100 in Ohio over the late-May weekend, the kind of US hundred-miler a UK runner might travel for, Brenda Johnson won the women’s race in 19:04:51, the second-fastest women’s time in the event’s 37-year history, and placed fourth overall, ahead of all but three of the men. The race runs as loops through state-park forest, the same ground covered several times, which makes it a particular test: not a course you survey once, but one you come to know as the hours wear on.

The runners who do well on a looped 100-miler tend to use the repetition. Each lap tells them something about where they lost time, where the climbs bite, how their fuelling is holding, and they adjust on the next pass. A finish near the front, run by someone who wasn’t fastest in any single mile, usually comes from that compounding of small, informed corrections rather than raw pace.

It maps onto how the better-run businesses use their data. A founder who reviews the same core numbers every month is running a looped course, where the value isn’t in any single reading but in seeing the same metrics come round again and adjusting against the last lap. Cash conversion, contribution margin by product, repeat rates: known well and revisited regularly, they allow steady corrections long before a problem becomes a crisis. Phoenix builds founders the monthly visibility that turns a familiar set of numbers into better decisions, lap after lap.

Source: Ultra Running Magazine, weekend recap 31 May 2026