Axfood starts online pharmacy
Axfood is starting an online pharmacy together with Axel Johnson’s investment company Novax and the e-commerce entrepreneurs behind the company LensOn.
Axfood has invested in and today owns 28% of the newly established e-commerce company Hubia,* which plans to launch a new online pharmacy in Sweden. Other part-owners are Axel Johnson’s investment company Novax, and entrepreneurs Kim Persson, Johan Bergenheim and Henrik Patzer. Kim and Johan co-founded and ran the company LensOn, which is one of Europe’s largest online retailers of contact lenses and glasses, which was sold to a British company in 2012.
The business concept of the new pharmacy company is to offer a broad and attractive range of pharmacy products online – at low prices, with fast and secure deliveries, and with innovative peripheral services that contribute to a unique customer experience.
“The pharmacy market is enormous, and e-commerce has just begun to gain traction,” says Kim Persson, CEO of Hubia. “With Axfood’s and Novax’s support we have the conditions to build a really good online pharmacy business. We have now come to a phase in which we will recruit a strong e-commerce team and are searching for a number of talented leaders, developers, advisers/pharmacists, marketers and category managers.”
At Axfood’s stores customers today can only buy over-the-counter (OTC) drugs. Through the planned online pharmacy, it will also be possible over time to offer sales of prescription medicines to Willys’ and Hemköp’s e-commerce customers.
Klas Balkow, President and CEO of Axfood, comments on the investment:
“Axfood is working relentlessly to strengthen the shopping experience for customers. Through our participation in the start-up of an online pharmacy we have the opportunity in the future to make it just as smooth for customers to order prescription drugs as OTC drugs.”
The pharmacy market in Sweden is growing steadily and had sales of approximately SEK 40 bn in 2016, of which e-commerce is the segment that is growing the fastest.
*Hubia is the company name. Once the online pharmacy has been launched on the market it will operate under another name that has not yet been determined.
Read more at www.hubia.se.
For further information, please contact:
Kim Persson, CEO Hubia, tel. +46-732-50 50 21
Axfood Media Relations, tel. +46-702-89 89 83
This press release was submitted for publication at 10 p.m. (CET) on 14 August 2017.
At Axfood we work with passion for food and people. Food that is good and sustainable. Axfood includes the Willys and Hemköp chains as well as Tempo, Handlar’n and Direkten, which are retailer-owned stores organized within Axfood Närlivs. B2B sales are handled through the Axfood Snabbgross chain, and wholesaling is conducted through Dagab. Axfood is also the owner of mat.se and Middagsfrid, and a part-owner of Urban Deli and Eurocash. Axfood is listed on Nasdaq Stockholm, and the principal owner is Axel Johnson AB. Read more at www.axfood.se.