Farmacia Tei started with the pharmacy Roxana Maftei opened in Bucharest in 1992 and has since grown into the fifth leading pharmaceutical retailer in Romania by sales.
Farmacia Tei is now competing with national chains with more than 100 pharmacies, which, however, see lower revenue. The strategy of the company has been to focus on the low cost segment of the pharmaceutical retail from the beginning.
In 2016, Farmacia Tei started expansion, opening a 1,000 square meter pharmacy in Dristor, Bucharest. This showed in the results, as Farmacia Tei ended 2017 with RON309 million sales, double as much as in 2016.
“Expansion with a store generates significant increase of the business and there is also the rise in sales of expensive drugs (…). People bought food supplements, dermo-cosmestics,” Roxana Maftei, founder and owner of Farmacia Tei said.
The company plans to continue expansion in Bucharest in 2020 and is also in talks for space in other cities. Farmacia Tei first got out of Bucharest in 2018, when it opened a pharmacy in Vivo Constanta shopping center. This is the only pharmacy outside the capital city of the six in the chain.
A spin-off of Farmacia Tei is Bebe Tei, the first supermarket selling children’s products, powder milk, diapers and baby strollers, among others.
Farmacia Tei’s rivals in Romania are the major pharmacy chains and the independent pharmacies. The five largest pharmaceutical retail chains in this country are Catena, Sensiblu, Dona, Help Net and Ropharma, which number more than 2,200 pharmacies together.
Pharmaceutical retail is a RON19 billion business a year, which has attracted foreign investors in the past two years – Czech-held Penta Investments and Germany’s Phoenix.(EUR1=RON4.7779)
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)