In mid-1999, Jupiter Communications predicted that the online health care market would reach about $1.7 billion by 2003. In addition, the online market specific to Vitamins and Herbal supplements would reach $434 million in that same time frame. The analyst for Jupiter, David Restrepo, also felt that other conditions made the online market for VSM players particularly favorable and that sales for these products were likely to migrate to the web more rapidly than other health care products for several reasons. First, many products in the VSM market have been purchased historically through catalogs, making web purchase a natural progression. Second, VSM products do not serve immediate needs (as opposed to prescription drugs) and therefore speed is less important to customers. Finally, VSM products are likely to be purchased repeatedly, which also makes online purchasing compelling. Given historically high acquisition costs for online customers (particularly in maturing net spaces like healthcare), this could prove to be particularly valuable. On a final note, Mr. Restrepo concluded with a prediction that MotherNature.com would likely be acquired by one of the large content sites in the online healthcare space.