Two hundred and fifty independent pharmacies have signed up to a retail partnership with manufacturers through support group Alphega.

As part of the partnership scheme, which launched in March, Alphega members receive advice from brands such as Reckitt Benckiser and Johnson & Johnson on how to tailor product displays to boost sales.

One independent pharmacy had increased its retail sales by 24 per cent in the 10 months since it joined the partnership, said Alphega UK head of operations David Alexander. These were “figures to die for”, he told delegates at the Alphega conference in Telford on Sunday (May 10).

“Global [manufacturing] giants have whole departments that make it their business to know everything about branding, packaging, store layout and customer loyalty... and they would all like to sell more retail products through your community pharmacies,” Mr Alexander told the conference.

Joining the partnership would enable pharmacies to “change into a retail environment that is fit for the future” in “just a day or two”, he claimed.

It “wasn’t as easy as it sounds” for pharmacies to keep their displays looking attractive to customers after the initial transformation, and contractors would have a “critical” role in enforcing the “new retail look” in the long term, he said. Alphega would also send a merchandiser once a month to introduce “important new products” to the pharmacy, Mr Alexander added.

'Frustrating' lack of consistency

Reckitt Benckiser national account manager Stewart Byrne told delegates that manufacturers found it “frustrating” when they could not ensure “any kind of consistency” in the way pharmacies presented their products. “For understandable reasons, independent pharmacies do not always benefit from our merchandising knowledge,” he said.

Manufacturers had a “plethora of sales data” that they could share, and the retail partnership was “the only way independents can compete with the majors”, Mr Byrne stressed.

Ashok Mehta, of Davina Pharmacy in Manchester, said rearranging his pharmacy’s retail offering after joining the partnership had initially been “hard work and fairly chaotic”. “It’s still early days for us but I can see that this new retail approach is going to increase our footfall,” he told the conference.

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