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Anthony Yap's vision of the future of pharmacies is a one-stop shop for health, beauty and medicine.
The founder of Good Price Pharmacy (GPP) and the 2012 Brisbane Young Entrepreneur of the Year winner has gone beyond the call of duty to fill in prescriptions.
He trains GPP staff to encourage customers to seek further advice on their medication therapy and medicine-taking regime.
"We are providing a health solution to consumers, not just products or prescribed medication.
We provide a higher level of advice where we see potential problems and request pharmacists to counsel on them."
He has also set up a script-reminder service that enables customers to request their script to be refilled via text-message.
The company has also outlined plans to launch an online store, but Yap is not convinced it will bring real cost savings.
"Customers would have to sign an authorisation form and wait two or more days for it to arrive by mail. There is no real cost-saving from buying online as the minimum parcel postage fee is $8 while only orders over $100 have free postage. Most people needing medication want it now."
"We had the pharmacy re-valued and found we had quite a lot of equity, which we used that to open more stores. Within the first five to six years, we owned all of our sites and decided to get critical mass by moving into franchising," he says.
Yap is bullish about the next 12 months and vows to increase franchise store numbers.
"Potential franchisees need to share the same vision, be retail-focused, savvy and willing to continually evolve with us."
"We will continually review our product-mix, plans and pricing to ensure that we have the optimal mix of products in each category at our existing stores," he says.
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