Online pharma market: a new challenge for traditional players

The latest chain to enter this segment is Centrofarm, which recently launched its first online pharmacy, following a €45,000 investment. The company's Manager, Dorin Catana, said the project is to be developed in line with market trends. The initial goal is to have 20-30 orders per day, for which the company has three distribution teams. The online pharmacy is only operational in Bucharest, but Centrofarm plans to make it available in other cities, once the traditional chain expands countrywide.

A similar project was launched in 2003 by one of the largest local pharmaceutical chains, HelpNet. "The project was unsuccessful, and we terminated it a year later. The revenue did not cover maintenance expenses, although we had some 60 orders each day," the company's General Manager, Isabelle Iacob, told Business Standard. "The future [Ed. n. of business] is on the internet, but I do not know if this will be the case for medications, as there is no certainty that drug storage conditions were respected," she added.

Another pharmacy, Farmimpex, based in the city of Craiova, also launched a similar project one and a half years ago. "Sales are not great; we have one or two orders each day, because the rules are not clear. The Health Ministry has not made clear statements for selling several medications. Another issue is that the elderly, who are in greatest need of medications, do not use the internet," Farmimpex owner, Alexandru Andrei, told Business Standard.

However, other players say this segment has potential for growth. "I think that we will have a boom of online pharmacies in the second half of 2008, as internet access increases and clients become more educated," according to the General Manager of Tevin Solution, the company which designed the online Centrofarm pharmacy, George Lemnaru.