Pharmaca on expansion fast track

BOULDER – In a time of corporate closures and layoffs, Pharmaca Integrative Pharmacy boasts healthy growth. Since the venture began at the end of 2000, its owners have opened four pharmacies and are geared up to add four more this year.

Pharmaca’s business model calls for acquiring 150 independent pharmacies within the next five years nationwide that will eventually be converted to Pharmacas.

About 1 percent of the 25,000 independent pharmacies around the country fit Pharmaca’s demographic parameters. Co-Chief Executive Officers Barry Perzow and Dale Schwartz said they expect to hire the existing staffs of stores they acquire, renovate the shops and relaunch them with the Pharmaca marketing campaign.

With 2001 revenues of $7.2 million, up 117 percent from 2000, the Boulder-based pharmacy chain may be just what the doctor ordered.

Perzow, Schwartz and about 15 private investors own Pharmaca Integrative Pharmacy. Start up costs were $1.2 million.

The first full-service, prescription-filling Pharmaca opened in November 2000 in North Boulder’s Ideal Broadway Shops, a strip mall at the corner of Broadway and Alpine Street. The second location, on the corner of 17th and Pearl streets opened in March 2001. Pharmaca opened a store last October in Portland, Ore. and another in Mill Valley, Calif. on Feb. 3.

The third Colorado pharmacy should open the first week of April on Wazee Street in lower downtown Denver. Other shops are planned for San Francisco and Berkeley, Calif., and Seattle.

Sunny Brown, a customer at the pharmacy in North Boulder, explained why she likes Pharmaca: ?They cover the gamut of herbal, homeopathic and traditional. It’s sort of like three or four approaches under one roof.?

Both Boulder stores carry conventional as well as complementary health care products, however, the Pearl Street location carries more supplements and offers pharmaceutical compounding.

A compounding pharmacist can take medications and change their delivery system from a pill to a topical cream, suppository or oral suspension form to decrease a drug’s side effects. Such a practitioner can add a tasty cherry flavor to a child’s expectorant, for example.

Historically, all pharmacists were trained in compounding, but the skill is rare today. It must be taught in additional classes and workshops, said Perzow, who is president and co-chief executive of the company. Pearl Street’s compounding pharmacist also fills prescriptions for veterinary products.

?It’s a real specialty with inventory and facility requirements,? he said. ?You need specific equipment and space in order for the DEA (U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration) to allow you to do compounding.?

Thus far, all pharmaca employees, from the stock people to the cashiers, are herbalists, homeopaths, naturopaths, nutritionists or estheticians. Though this may change as the company grows, health-related advice is offered in free, private consultations lasting up to one hour.

?More than 80 percent of Americans are on some form of supplementation, and by 2004, 4 billion prescriptions will be filled in the U.S.? said Perzow. All Pharmaca pharmacists are trained in nutrient depletion and side effects. They are also willing to consult with a customer’s primary-care physician.

Most Pharmaca stores offer chair-massages and conduct cholesterol, blood pressure and bone-density testing at health fairs throughout the year. The pharmacies also provide guest lectures on health-related issues like childhood immunization.

Though the shops carry Chinese herbs, homeopathic products, teas, vitamin supplements, body-care supplies, and customary over-the-counter medications, there is some merchandise the chief executive officers refuse to offer. Don Summerfield, vice president of retail operations, is also a certified herbalist and educator. He visits many manufacturing plants as a quality control measure.

Customers might be surprised when they don’t find some popular diet products and versions of human-growth hormones at a Pharmaca store. ?They may be very popular, but because we have a safety issue with them, we won’t carry them,? he said.

Summerfield had been in the pharmaceutical industry for 12 years. He was the president of a pharmacy for six years, and he worked in the Wild Oats chain for five years.

Perzow was in retail for much of his life dealing primarily with natural products. He was the former president of Capers, a the natural foods grocer that merged with Alfalfa’s. Perzow and Summerfield begain researching the Pharmaca venture after Alfalfa’s sold to Wild Oats four years ago.

?The one segment of the retail industry that has not changed in 40 years is the pharmacy industry,? said Perzow. ?We’d like to think we’re in the process of redefining tomorrow’s pharmacy.?Contact Sheryl Bass at (303) 440-4950 or e-mail research@bcbr.com

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