Independent pharmacists seek buyers

After several years when “expansion” was the word of the day in drug retail, the market is now entering a new phase, where it mainly has to deal with the changing commercial conditions of distributors, the ones that in many cases were keeping retail business alive, too. Thus, many of the independent pharmacists are now forced to sell their business, whilst the list of potential buyers is shrinking. The large drugstore networks that have embraced heavy expansion until 2008 are now becoming more prudent and are looking twice before taking over a unit. “Though the crisis fallout hasn’t been fully felt in Romania, 2008 has been a difficult year for drugstores. There are no more investments in drugstore openings, there are hundreds of drugstores for sale with no buyers and major players are cutting jobs, with an impact over the quality of the pharmaceutical service in the future,” said Isabelle Iacob, general manager of Help Net. The price a buyer is now willing to pay for a drugstore has dropped so much that some owners are considering giving up this option.