When the drugstore becomes a pharmacy

Health becomes retail’s new growth market

Drugstore chains have long since stopped selling only shampoo, detergent and toothpaste. Food supplements, self-tests, dermocosmetics, medical devices and self-medication products take up ever more space. At the same time, large retail companies are recognising that health is an attractive growth market.

How far this development can go is currently shown above all by Germany. On 16 December 2025, dm launched the mail-order pharmacy dm med. On offer are around 2,500 non-prescription, pharmacy-only medicines as well as pharmacy-exclusive food supplements, vitamins and just under 1,000 dermocosmetics products. The products are offered through the dm online shop and the dm app and can be ordered together with classic drugstore articles. Legally, the sale of medicines takes place through an independent mail-order pharmacy based in Bor in the Czech Republic.¹

And it does not stop there. Since 2025, dm has additionally been testing health services in selected branches in Germany. These include blood analyses, AI-supported skin analyses and eye screenings. The company formulates its ambition remarkably clearly: dm wants to become, for many people, a first port of call for prevention and staying healthy.²

The boundary between drugstore and healthcare is thereby shifting. The decisive competition no longer arises only over vitamin preparations or cosmetics, but increasingly over precisely those low-threshold health concerns in which pharmacies too see their future role.

Rossmann goes one step further

Rossmann has meanwhile announced that it will likewise launch its own online pharmacy at the end of 2026. The model is to be operated through the newly founded ROSSMANN Apotheke B.V., based in Emmen in the Netherlands. Unlike dm, Rossmann plans from the outset to dispense prescription medicines as well. Insured people in Germany are to be able to redeem their e-prescription directly through the Rossmann app. According to the company, the app has more than twelve million active users.³

From a competition standpoint, that is precisely the decisive point. Rossmann is not simply building an additional web shop for medicines. The company is integrating the pharmacy into an already existing digital ecosystem with millions of customers, discount mechanisms, shopping basket, app and regular customer contact.

Anyone who is already ordering sun cream, nappies, detergent or food supplements through the Rossmann app could in future redeem their e-prescription at the same time. Obtaining medicines thus becomes part of an everyday shopping process.

For pharmacies this is a considerably bigger strategic topic than the question of whether ibuprofen is offered a few euros more cheaply at a drugstore group. It is about sovereignty over the customer interface.

But the model is legally contested

That drugstore chains are moving into the medicines market is by no means finally settled in Germany either. In February 2026, the Wettbewerbszentrale (the German centre against unfair competition) filed suit against dm’s model. It sees, among other things, the danger of a mixing of drugstore and pharmacy ranges and raises the question of whether the German ban on non-pharmacist ownership of pharmacies is being circumvented through the construction with a group-affiliated Czech pharmacy. The proceedings before the Karlsruhe Regional Court are still running. No court decision had been handed down as of early August 2026.⁴

Individual health services offered by dm are also now occupying the courts. The Wettbewerbszentrale has, among other things, filed suits against the eye screenings offered. Criticised are, for example, the qualification of the staff deployed, the use of the medical devices and the question of whether the advertising of the offering suggests a diagnostic certainty that the screening cannot deliver.⁵

A central limit of the retail health model is thus already becoming apparent. Health can indeed be made more accessible, but it cannot be treated entirely like an ordinary consumer good.

What customers find attractive about it

The advantages of the model are nonetheless obvious. Large drugstore chains have high brand recognition, enormous purchasing power, attractive own brands and established digital channels. Customers already know the apps, have customer accounts and are used to discount campaigns or personalised offers.

Health products can thus be easily integrated into existing shopping routines. Ordering can be done conveniently from home, prices are transparently comparable, and the inhibition threshold for simple health offerings falls.

Particularly in regions with limited access to doctors or pharmacies, digital offerings can complement provision. Nor must pharmaceutical counselling necessarily take place exclusively on site. dm med, for example, offers counselling by pharmaceutical professionals by telephone and through digital contact channels.¹

The mistake would therefore be to dismiss such models wholesale as inferior competition. They solve real customer problems: time, convenience, price and access.

Where the risks begin

Medicines, however, differ fundamentally from ordinary retail goods. A pack of painkillers is not simply another product in the basket between shampoo and detergent.

Even supposedly simple OTC medicines can have contraindications, interact with other medicines or be used incorrectly. Frequent headaches may need investigation rather than another pack of analgesics. A decongestant nasal spray is helpful for short-term use but can itself become a problem with longer use. Food supplements can influence laboratory values or interact with medicines.

In the on-site pharmacy conversation, moreover, information emerges that a customer would not necessarily have looked for themselves. Which medicines are already being taken? Since when have the complaints existed? Is there a pregnancy? Are there comorbidities? Is this possibly a case that should be medically assessed?

The more strongly medicines are integrated into a normal shopping process, the more important therefore becomes the question of whether the desired low threshold turns into an excessive normalisation of medicine consumption.

That does not mean that online pharmacy is fundamentally unsafe. Rather, it means that good digital models need the same pharmaceutical safety mechanisms as good on-site provision.

And Switzerland?

The Swiss situation differs substantially from Germany. The most important reason is that Switzerland already traditionally has a strong professional drugstore system.

In the course of the revision of therapeutic products law, the former dispensing category C was abolished. Following the reclassification, non-prescription medicines can in principle also be dispensed through drugstores, provided the corresponding professional and cantonal requirements are met. Category B medicines, by contrast, remain in principle in the pharmacy channel, or subject to the dispensing conditions defined for them.⁶

Competition between pharmacy and drugstore is therefore nothing new in Switzerland. What is new is rather that internationally scaling retail groups with enormous purchasing power, strong own brands and digital platforms are entering this market.

Particularly relevant here is Rossmann.

Rossmann is already in Switzerland

Rossmann opened its first Swiss branch on 5 December 2024 in the Emmen Center. At the time the range comprised around 15,000 products and the company already announced further expansion.⁷

That expansion is now clearly visible. The current Swiss location overview lists 20 Rossmann branches, among others in Baden, Biel, Chur, St Gallen, Wallisellen, Spreitenbach and Winterthur. Rossmann has thus developed within less than two years from a single test location into a relevant Swiss drugstore chain.⁸

So far, however, there is no announcement that the Rossmann online pharmacy planned for the end of 2026 will also serve the Swiss market. The company’s communication on the pharmacy launch refers to Germany and in particular to the redemption of the German e-prescription.³

The Swiss Rossmann branches too are currently positioned as drugstores and not as pharmacies. For pharmacies, therefore, competition arises in the short term above all in dermocosmetics, food supplements, body care, health products, self-tests and further ranges with high free margins.

Economically, however, these product groups are by no means incidental. For many pharmacies they are an important additional business outside the regulated medicines sector.

And dm?

dm currently operates no Swiss subsidiary with physical dm stores. In the company’s European country overview, Switzerland is not listed as a dm market.⁹

Swiss customers can nonetheless obtain German dm products by various routes, for example through cross-border shopping services. For the ordinary dm online shop, forwarding services such as MeinEinkauf.ch exist. A regular Swiss offering of dm med cannot, however, be inferred from that.

With Rossmann the connection to Switzerland is even more direct. For goods from the German Rossmann online shop, Rossmann itself points to the possibility of delivery via MeinEinkauf.ch. Certain product groups are excluded.¹⁰

For medicines, however, special rules apply. Private individuals may in principle import medicines for their own use in a quantity of at most one month’s supply into Switzerland. That is not, however, the same as operating a regular Swiss mail-order pharmacy.¹¹

Mail-order trade in medicines is moreover currently regulated considerably more restrictively in Switzerland than in Germany. According to pharmaSuisse it is in principle prohibited and can only be authorised under defined conditions. Today, even the mail-order supply of non-prescription medicines in principle requires a medical prescription. A revision of the Therapeutic Products Act is intended to open mail-order trade further in future.¹²

It is precisely this planned opening that the profession should follow attentively. Because it could make digital business models in Switzerland considerably more attractive.

Are drugstore chains therefore a major danger for Swiss pharmacies?

In the short term, rather not. Strategically, very much so.

It is unlikely that Rossmann or another drugstore chain will replace the classic Swiss pharmacy business in the short term. Statutory dispensing competences, cantonal authorisations and pharmaceutical professional responsibility continue to form clear boundaries.

The greater danger lies elsewhere.

Drugstore chains can put pressure on precisely those ranges with which pharmacies achieve attractive margins: dermocosmetics, supplements, health products, hygiene, self-tests and increasingly also preventive offerings. At the same time they have high footfall, strong own brands and the ability to price aggressively.

More important still is the digital dimension. If customers obtain their health products, self-tests, skin analysis and perhaps in future also medicines as a matter of course through the same retail app, there is a risk that the pharmacy loses the first customer contact.

The competition of the future is therefore perhaps not called drugstore versus pharmacy.

It is rather platform versus individual point of sale.

The wrong answer would be to want to become the better drugstore

Pharmacies will scarcely win a price and range competition against international retail groups. They should therefore not make it their central playing field either.

The pharmacy’s strategic advantage lies where a drugstore chain structurally reaches its limits: in pharmaceutical assessment, triage, medication knowledge, treatment, prevention and longitudinal support.

Switzerland already offers interesting conditions for this. In 2026 pharmaSuisse is positioning the pharmacy specifically as the first port of call for health questions. Through consultation models, defined complaints can be assessed and treated. Added to this are vaccinations, health checks and further preventive offerings. Around 1,830 pharmacies currently form a Switzerland-wide, low-threshold network.¹³

Galenica already reports rising demand for health services in pharmacies. Corresponding services have been integrated into ten alternative insurance models since the beginning of 2026 and reach more than one million insured people. Initial analyses show, according to the company, that a large proportion of simple cases can be concluded directly in the pharmacy.¹⁴

That is precisely where the opportunity for the future lies.

From product sales to health platform

A pharmacy whose value proposition consists essentially of products on the shelf will become increasingly interchangeable in the face of large retail platforms.

A pharmacy that, by contrast, competently assesses an acute health problem within twenty minutes, dispenses a suitable medicine where needed, vaccinates, checks a blood pressure or relevant laboratory parameter, recognises interactions and knows when a doctor has to be brought in is considerably harder to replace.

That does not mean that ranges become unimportant. On the contrary. Dermocosmetics, supplements and self-medication remain important business fields. But they should be linked more strongly with professional competence.

With dermocosmetics this could mean, for instance, not simply selling the same cream as Rossmann but combining skin analyses with structured counselling, individual care routines and follow-up checks. Own product lines or exclusive ranges can further reduce price transparency and create customer loyalty.

With food supplements the pharmacy should differentiate itself through checking the indication, laboratory diagnostics and interaction knowledge. And with self-tests the added value lies not in selling the test but in the correct interpretation and the question of what has to happen after the result.

At the same time pharmacies have to become more convenient

Professional competence alone will not suffice, however.

A customer used to ordering products within a few seconds through an app will not in the long run accept a pharmacy that is hard to reach by telephone, offers no online appointment booking and cannot say whether a product is available.

Pharmacies must therefore take on the convenience strengths of retail without losing their pharmaceutical identity.

Online reservation, click and collect, local delivery service, digital appointment booking, video consultation and clear digital customer communication should increasingly become the standard. The e-prescription will accelerate this change further.

The strategic target state is not either bricks-and-mortar or digital.

It is phygital: digitally convenient, but personal and pharmaceutically competent as soon as that becomes relevant.

For the individual pharmacist too, the role is changing

The profession does not thereby become less important. It becomes more demanding.

If simple product purchases are increasingly automated, the value of those activities that cannot be automated rises. Clinical assessment, communication, triage, medication management, prevention and the support of chronic patients become more important.

To this comes a second dimension of competence. Pharmacists have to understand better how customers experience services today. Appointment availability, speed, digital communication, data protection, price perception and a consistent customer experience become part of successful healthcare.

The pharmacy of the future is therefore neither a small warehouse nor a mini medical practice.

It is a low-threshold health centre with pharmaceutical core competence.

The real competition is not Rossmann

Swiss pharmacists should therefore take Rossmann’s expansion in Switzerland and the pharmacy plans of dm and Rossmann in Germany seriously. Panic would nonetheless be out of place.

The Swiss starting position is comparatively strong. Pharmacies have extended dispensing competences, can assess and treat health problems, vaccinate and increasingly offer diagnostic services. At the same time they possess one of the most valuable assets in healthcare: personal trust.

The most dangerous reaction would be to rest on it.

Because dm and Rossmann demonstrate how consistently retail companies can combine customer focus, convenience, digitalisation and health offerings. Migros, Coop and Galenica in turn show that such integrated health ecosystems have long been emerging in Switzerland too.

For independent pharmacies this does not mean having to imitate the size of these groups. Their opportunity consists precisely in being better where size alone brings no advantage: personal counselling, specialisation, speed, local networking and long-term patient relationships.

Drugstore chains can sell health products. Digital platforms can deliver medicines.

The decisive question for pharmacies is therefore not how they defend their shelf. It is which part of healthcare only they can convincingly occupy.

Anyone who finds a clear answer to that need not fear the drugstore next door.