Chemist shop chains

The trade

How this trade really works

From the factory to the customer, each person in the chain wants something different. Most of what goes wrong comes from the gaps between them.

The stockists

Your shops buy from many stockists, each one carrying a set of companies. They deliver once or more a day, give credit, and take back expired goods when they can. They want regular orders and timely payment.

Your central buying, if you have one

Some chains buy centrally and send stock out to each shop. Others let every pharmacist order for his own shop. Either way, the owner wants to buy at the best terms without filling every shop with slow medicines.

The pharmacist in charge of each shop

He knows his regular patients, the doctors near his shop and what they write. He orders what he thinks he will need, keeps the shop clean, and handles the cash. He wants to never say no to a patient, so he keeps a little extra of everything.

The doctors around each shop

A shop below a busy clinic sells what that doctor writes. When the doctor changes the brand he prefers, that shop's needs change, and nobody tells the owner.

The patient

Comes with a slip, often for medicines he takes every month. He wants the exact brand, the right discount on the printed price, and no running around. If one shop does not have it, he goes to the chemist next door.

Most of your stock is slow. A few items carry the shop.

A chemist shop keeps a very long list of medicines, creams, syrups, surgical items and baby products. A small part of that list sells every day. Blood pressure and sugar tablets, common antibiotics, fever and acidity medicines. The rest sits, a strip here, a bottle there, waiting for the one patient who asks. The money is not in the fast items. It is buried in the slow ones.

The pharmacist overstocks because he does not want to say no

He is not wasting your money on purpose. A patient turned away is a patient lost to the shop across the road. So he keeps a little extra of everything, and orders the scheme quantity when the stockist offers free strips. Multiply that by every shop in the chain, and a large amount of money is sitting in medicines that move once in a long while.

Expiry is a loss you meet too late

A slow medicine reaches its date quietly. The pharmacist finds it during a clean-up and sends it back to the stockist. The stockist gives credit when the company gives it to him, and often for less. Some companies' goods he will not take back at all. By the time the strip is found, nothing can be done.

One shop runs out while another sits on the same medicine

Your shop near the hospital runs through a costly injection in days. Your shop in a residential colony has the same injection in its fridge, untouched for months. Neither pharmacist knows about the other's stock. The hospital shop orders more from a stockist, and the colony shop's stock moves closer to its date.

Substitutes decide your margin

When a patient does not insist on a brand, the pharmacist can give a medicine with the same salt from another company. Some of these give the shop a much better margin. A good pharmacist uses this well. Another one does not bother, or gives what is easiest. The owner rarely knows which shop earns what on the same kind of medicine.

The discount war has changed the counter

Patients now compare your price with online pharmacies and the discount chemist down the road. Each shop gives some discount on the printed price, and some give more than you agreed. On fast items with thin margins, a large discount can turn a sale into a loss.

The owner trusts each pharmacist, and has to

He cannot sit in every shop. He trusts the man in charge with stock, cash and credit to regular patients and nearby nursing homes. Most of them deserve it. But trust without a clear picture means a slow leak in one shop can go on for a long time before anyone notices.

Where the money quietly goes

What you cannot see today, and what it costs you

How much money is sitting in slow medicines, shop by shop

You know your total purchases. You do not know how much of the stock in each shop has not moved for months, and what it is worth. That money could be paying stockists early for a better rate.

Which medicine is lying in one shop and needed in another

Without seeing every shop's stock together, the chain buys again what it already owns. One shop's slow item is another shop's fast item, and the stock never meets the patient who needs it.

Which items lose money

After the discount at the counter and the margin the company gives, some medicines earn almost nothing, and some are sold at a loss. Nobody in the shop adds this up item by item, so the loss repeats every day.

Which shop is doing well and why

Your shops can have similar sales and very different profit. One sells better-margin substitutes, holds less dead stock and gives sensible discounts. The other does not. Without comparing them item by item, you cannot teach one what the other knows.

What the slow stock will cost you at expiry

A medicine that has been lying for most of its life in one shop will not sell in time there. Today you only learn this when the pharmacist finds it expired. Long before that, the fact that it has not moved was already the warning.

A season, the way it usually goes

The story you already know

A family in Nagpur runs a chain of chemist shops. The first one is opposite a large hospital. The others are in residential colonies, near a market and beside a busy children's clinic. Each shop has a pharmacist in charge who orders from the stockists and handles the cash. The owner visits each shop when he can, and every month his accountant puts the figures together.

In the rains, the shop beside the children's clinic runs out of a fever syrup and an antibiotic suspension again and again. The pharmacist orders more, and the stockist sometimes has none. Parents go to the chemist next door. At the same time, the market shop has plenty of the same syrup, ordered for a scheme the stockist offered. Nobody puts the shops side by side.

At the end of the year, the owner orders a clean-up of every shop. Each pharmacist fills a carton with expired strips, syrups and creams. Some of it goes back to stockists. Some of it nobody will take. The accountant shows a healthy sales figure for the year. The owner looks at the cartons and wonders how much of his profit is sitting in them, and how much more is still on the racks.

What you can now decide

Decisions you could not make before

Move slow medicines to the shop that needs them

When the colony shop has an injection lying for months and the hospital shop is ordering it every week, you move it. The move is recorded. The medicine reaches a patient before its date, and you do not buy it again.

Set what each shop should keep

Once you see what actually sells in each shop, you can tell each pharmacist which items to keep plenty of and which to keep only a little of. The children's clinic shop keeps more syrups. The hospital shop keeps more injections and surgical items. Each shop stops being a copy of the others.

Clear old stock while it can still sell

Medicines that have been lying a long time are next season's expiry. You can see them now and move them to a busier shop, return them to the stockist while he will still take them, or stop reordering them. Old stock on the rack is a loss you have not counted yet.

Fix the items that lose money

When a medicine is sold at a loss after the discount, you can see it, item by item. You can cap the discount on it, change which brand you push, or stop keeping it.

Learn from your best shop

Compare your best shop with a weaker one, item by item. Where the strong shop sells a better-margin medicine with the same salt and the weak shop does not, you can show the weak shop's pharmacist exactly what to change.

Pay stockists from money that was stuck

As slow stock shrinks, the money you free can go towards paying stockists early, which often earns a better rate. That money was always yours. It was just sitting on a rack.

Where you get ahead

Where your competitor keeps losing

Your shops say no less often

When the fast items are watched and moved between shops, a patient almost always finds his medicine. A patient who never has to go next door stays with you for years.

You carry less stock and lose less to expiry

Competitors fill every shop with everything, and throw away a carton of expired medicine every year. You keep each shop stocked for its own patients, and move the rest before it dies.

You can open the next shop with confidence

You know what each kind of shop sells: near a hospital, near a clinic, in a colony. When you open the next one, you stock it from what your other shops have taught you, not from a guess.

The same season, with Vyavora

The story, told again

Same Nagpur chain, next year. Every shop now bills on Vyavora. Each pharmacist sees only his own shop. The owner sees all of them, and can switch from one to another or see the whole chain at once. Billing carries on when the internet drops, and catches up when it returns.

When the rains bring the fevers, the owner sees the fever syrup moving fast at the children's clinic shop, and sees a large stock of it lying at the market shop. He has it moved that afternoon, and the move is recorded on both sides. The clinic shop does not run dry. He tells the market shop's pharmacist to stop taking that scheme from the stockist.

Every month, he opens the list of medicines that have not moved in each shop, with the money beside them. Some go to busier shops. Some go back to stockists while there is time. At the year-end clean-up, the expiry cartons are much smaller. And for the first time, the owner can see which items his shops sell at a loss, and change them.

Why the others agree to it

Everyone in the chain is better off

For the pharmacist in charge

He sees his own shop's stock, his slow and fast items, and can ask for medicines from another shop instead of waiting on a stockist. Billing keeps going when the internet goes. He is judged on a clear picture, not on the owner's guess.

For the owner's accountant

Every sale and purchase already carries the shop it belongs to. GST is kept per shop and added up for filing. He no longer has to collect registers from each shop at the month's end.

For the owner

He can trust his pharmacists and still see everything. He knows where his money is sitting, which shop is strong and why, and what to do about the weak one.

What this does not do

Vyavora does not keep batch numbers or expiry dates. It shows how long each medicine has been lying in each shop, which tells you long before the date that it will not sell in time. It does not keep the registers the drug law asks a chemist to maintain, and it does not store prescriptions. It does not suggest substitutes; your pharmacist still decides that. It does not place orders with stockists by itself and it does not run home delivery. Your pharmacists still have to count, move and decide. Vyavora shows them where.

Straight answers

Questions people in this trade ask

Will it warn me before a medicine expires?

Not by date, because it does not keep expiry dates. It shows how long a medicine has been lying unsold in each shop. That is an earlier warning than the date, because it tells you while there is still time to move the medicine.

Can one pharmacist see another shop's stock or cash?

No. Each pharmacist is tied to his own shop and sees only that shop. You decide who sees what.

We bill with different pack sizes and strips. Does that work?

Yes. Item details such as pack size can be picked at the billing counter, so the bill and the stock stay right.

Our area loses internet often. Does billing stop?

No. Billing carries on without internet and catches up when the connection returns.

Can we send messages to regular patients?

Yes. Customers can be reached on WhatsApp, for example to tell a regular patient that his monthly medicine is ready.

Our old records are in Excel. Do we type everything again?

No. Vyavora reads the Excel and PDF files you already keep, so your item list and old records come in without retyping.

Your racks are full. The patient still walked out empty-handed.