Opening your own pharmacy is a very profitable business, but you need to be prepared for competition.
Before opening a pharmacy, you need to clearly understand what format of business you want to open?
Maybe it will be a mini pharmacy, a network of pharmacies, or a regular pharmacy. A well-written pharmacy business plan will allow you to decide on this issue, based on your financial capabilities.
How good is the pharmacy business?
Such a business, with the correct placement of a pharmacy, is able to pay for itself in a year and a half of its activity. It is best to open a pharmacy in the fall, since it is during this period that sales volumes increase significantly.
This business will always be in demand, since, unfortunately, there are more diseases in our time. People began to value their time, it is convenient for them to buy medicines not far from home or work.
In addition, it should be borne in mind that drugs have a shelf life of no more than 2 years.
All this contributes to the fact that the demand for medicines does not dry out. Thanks to this, the profit of the pharmacy is impressive.
There are risk factors in the pharmacy business, but they can be dealt with, so this business is very profitable.
Choosing the location of your pharmacy
In order for your pharmacy business plan to be implemented and make a solid profit, it is better if you rent a ready-made premises.
A more complex and costly option is to build a new building near a supermarket, market, metro station, medical facility, or any other place where there are a lot of people.
It must also be borne in mind that in order to conduct a pharmacy business, it is necessary to obtain a license. The license is issued specifically for the premises (it is subject to inspection by supervisory authorities for compliance with the requirements for the sale of medicines).
To go through the licensing procedure, you will need from 2 to 6 months, depending on how you manage to agree with the inspectors, as well as on their schedule and workload.
Therefore, the cost of renting premises for this period of time increases — you already need to rent a room, but there is still no way to trade.
In addition, you need to take care of a beautiful design, advertising, reasonable prices, a sign.
Pharmacy Business Plan: Costs Before Starting a Business
In order for the pharmacy to be able to fully operate, it is necessary to calculate the funds for the purchase of the necessary equipment, salaries for staff and rent or purchase of premises.
To implement a pharmacy business plan, you must:
- Design and finishing work of the premises — 70,000 rubles.
- Conducting communications (water, light, gas) — 90,000 rubles.
- Costs for registration of activities — 80,000 rubles.
- Cash register and org. Equipment — 50,000 rubles.
- Purchase of a basic assortment of goods — 950,000 rubles.
- Air conditioning, fire safety — 40,000 rubles.
- Safe for storage of narcotic substances — 25,000 rubles.
- Glass showcases — 40,000 rubles.
- Refrigerator -16 000 rub.
- Shelving — 35,000 rubles.
- Payroll fund (in the period before the launch of the project) — 100,000 rubles.
- Advertising — 20,000 rubles.
- Other expenses — 15,000 rubles.
The total cost of launching one pharmacy is just over $1.5 million.
If you build or buy your own premises, then the costs will increase at least 2 times.
Full payback of the project — 2 years
Pharmacy business plan: how to attract customers?
To attract customers, you can use advertising in your city (in newspapers, stands, the city’s website) or arrange special promotions in the pharmacy itself, offer discount cards.
It is desirable that future customers learn about you even before the pharmacy opens (due to the long launch).
To inform you, you can make an outdoor sign with an approximate content: “There will be a pharmacy here.”
Then future customers will get used to the fact that the pharmacy is located in the place you have chosen.
Pharmacy business plan: the main steps of the project
- Carefully select employees, taking into account their age, education, work experience. A team that works well together brings a good reputation and good profits.
- Constantly expand the range of products. Foreign medicines are expensive; domestic cheaper analogues can be offered to the buyer.
- Use computer programs in your work — they will help track the order, show the turnover, and help you order goods much faster.
- You can create a help desk in the pharmacy, with the help of which you can offer the buyer a service such as «individual order».
- Take care of the proper appearance of employees (buying the same uniform), cleanliness and comfort in the room.
It is impossible not to note the risks that can be expected when opening a pharmacy business
- It is primarily competition. The number of pharmacies is constantly increasing, so it will be quite difficult to stay on the market. That is why you need to carefully study the strategies of your competitors.
- Secondly, you need to focus on the middle class of the buyer and not buy only expensive drugs. You should always have products of different pricing policies.
- Last but not least, choose your location carefully. The pharmacy business is retail. And in retail, the main success factor is a place, a place and again a place!
Pharmacy business plan
