Most people still associate the name Douglas with perfume and cosmetics from a downtown shop. On Thursday, however, the cosmetics retailer made a notable strategic shift. He also wants to offer prescription drugs in the future – online. The Düsseldorf perfumery chain is also buying the Dutch online pharmacy Disapo. The retailer wants to link this to its online marketplace for so-called beauty products.
Douglas is thus expanding its online offering to include a business area that, at first glance, does not seem to fit the perfumery retailer. In fact, Douglas boss Tina Müller has expanded the range over the years in the direction of health. The company already offers dietary supplements, skin care products developed by doctors, so-called Doctor Brands, and pharmacy cosmetics. These are products that, according to the manufacturer, should be particularly effective and well tolerated.
Disapo from Heerlen in the Netherlands is said to achieve sales in the high double-digit millions and help Douglas to expand its already growing online business even faster. The perfumery retailer is aiming for the two billion sales mark there. It is currently at 1.2 billion euros.
Board member Vanessa Stützle explained that Douglas wants to gradually expand the range of online pharmacies in other European countries. It is a market with a sales volume of more than 160 billion euros. Because it is foreseeable that e-prescriptions will be introduced more frequently in Germany, Douglas expects “enormous growth in the online pharmacy business”.
Prescription drugs should be available in the second half of the year
Müller said that once Disapo is integrated into the Douglas platform, millions of Douglas customers will have access to an online pharmacy. Disapo founder Sebastian Kraus is to remain managing director of the company, which has 200 employees. The networking should be completed in the spring.
And in the first half of the year, customers should be able to buy over-the-counter medicines (OTC products) via the Douglas marketplace. In the second half of the year, it should also be possible to order prescription drugs via an e-prescription.
Douglas is currently making a total of a good three billion in sales and is hoping for additional revenue and new customers for its marketplace from the acquisition. The German pharmacy market alone is estimated to have a total turnover of around 60 billion euros, of which five percent is attributable to online trading.
“The markets for beauty and health are increasingly growing together,” said Müller. Douglas recognized the trend early on and continuously expanded its range online.