Today’s retail environment is more competitive and challenging than ever before and the Irish pharmacy sector is no different. Irish Pharmacies are competing with new sales channels and the unpredictable digitally enabled consumer. At the same time, they need to maximise revenues and margins while controlling stock levels, minimising mark down sales and pleasing customers. That, combined with keeping up with rapidly changing trends, can mean that one day you realise that your overall margin is substantially lower then expected or that your cash flow has evaporated. Irish Pharmacies trying to survive and thrive in this environment need to rethink the old ways of doing things.
To be successful, Irish Pharmacies should view products, ranges, prices and space planning as an integral strategic process. Combining all of these with a clear strategy results in products that work with the space in which they will be seen and sold and more importantly with happier and more satisfied customers and the delivery of excellent customer service. Let’s take a look at why this is important and how it works in the real world.
Maximise Your Pharmacy Space
For those with bricks-and-mortar stores the physical space constraints are obvious. Successful retail planning requires maximising the use of each square foot of physical real estate.
One of the key messages I always tell my clients is that over-buying is a danger that can result in margin-killing markdowns and customers and staff who are overwhelmed by product options. They often leave to shop elsewhere. Therefore, the need to maximise the use of space is critical to achieving business objectives.

It All Starts With Metrics
Building winning product ranges and properly placing them within the available physical space all begins with setting the right metrics.
Metrics are set pre-season for sales and margins, and all further plans need to support and reconcile with these targets.
Metrics also need to be established from a space perspective and this is one of the areas where most managers are failing. One way to do this is by dividing the store into categories or departments and understanding their financial performance.
In order to account for space, the first step is to determine how space will be measured consistently across the pharmacy. After this task has been complete planning and decision-making can begin.

Let The Planning Begin
The first decision a pharmacy manager should make is how much space to allocate each department. When this is done you will know very accurately how many products you can fit into the physical space without cluttering the aesthetics. A very important part of this process is making decisions about duplication of products, why do you need two products doing the same job? Very often I see pharmacies carrying many products which do the same thing. Is there any need for this? Not really!

It Takes Leadership and a System
Most people find this process very difficult to do, because people don’t always understand why it has to be done. Unless the manager is able to explain the reason behind this process (to the whole team) the process won’t be successful.
Another key element of this process is product training. All members of the team must be able to recommend alternative products where they are more suited to the customer needs. However what I find most of the time is that if the display is correct most people will find what they are looking for.
Make Space-Aware Range Planning a Priority for Your Team
It should now be apparent that making range planning and being space-aware is an important step that Irish Pharmacies can take to improve the performance of their end- to-end retail planning and execution process. We have implemented this process in two pharmacies recently and sales have increased by 25% while stock levels have been reduced by 15%.
If you want to know more about this please contact Juan Pablo Fravega at 085-765-6110 or jfravega@pharmasupport.ie
About Juan Pablo Fravega
Juan is a Retail Expert and Business Consultant at PharmaSupport. He writes about marketing trends, consumer behaviour and other relevant topics that enable pharmacists to increase sales, serve their customers better, and be better Managers overall. When he finds some spare time he also lectures in Marketing, Supply Chain and Operations Management in IBAT college on their undergraduate and MBA programmes.