Why Pharmacies Matter Differently in China and Europe, and What Beauty Brands Should Do
- Double V
- 6天前
- 讀畢需時 6 分鐘
Walk into a pharmacy in Paris, Berlin, or Madrid, and you will immediately notice something striking: skincare is not a side category. It is central. Shelves are dominated by dermocosmetics brands such as La Roche-Posay, Vichy, Eucerin, Bioderma, and Avène. Pharmacists actively recommend products for acne, eczema, rosacea, post-procedure care, and sensitive skin. For many European consumers, the pharmacy is the default place to buy functional skincare.
In China, the same is not true.
Despite having more than 700,000 retail pharmacies nationwide, Chinese drugstores remain a marginal channel for beauty and skincare. While functional skincare products are increasingly present, pharmacies are still overwhelmingly associated with medicines, OTC products, and health supplements, but not beauty.
This divergence is not accidental. It reflects bigger structural differences across consumer trust, channel economics, and brand development paths.
Why are pharmacies not a major beauty channel in China, while they are in Europe?
1. Different definitions of “professionalism”
In Europe, pharmacies have long functioned as semi-clinical spaces. Pharmacists are trained not only to dispense medication but also to advise on skin conditions, prevention, and long-term skin health. As a result, dermocosmetics emerged within the pharmacy system, not outside of it.
Today, pharmacies account for roughly 25,30% of total beauty and personal care sales in Western Europe, and over 60% of dermocosmetics sales. In markets such as France, pharmacy skincare is not niche , it is mainstream.
In China, however, the professional authority of pharmacies remains narrowly defined. Their core value lies in drug availability, price competitiveness, and basic health management. Skincare products are treated as supplementary SKUs rather than core solutions.
For Chinese consumers, “professional skincare advice” is far more likely to come from dermatologists on social media, medical KOLs, or peer reviews on platforms like Xiaohongshu, not from a pharmacy counter.
2. A channel image problem: pharmacies feel old, while beauty feels young
Beyond trust, there is a powerful perception gap.
In China, pharmacies are widely seen as functional, practical, and even outdated spaces. They are associated with older consumers, illness, and necessity-driven purchases. Their retail environment, merchandising, and communication rarely speak to youth, aspiration, or lifestyle.
Beauty and skincare, by contrast, have become deeply youth-driven and culturally dynamic categories. Discovery happens online, shaped by social platforms, fast-moving trends, and visual storytelling. New products are launched through livestreams, short videos, and community-driven reviews, which are formats that pharmacies struggle to compete with.
As a result, younger consumers simply do not associate pharmacies with skincare exploration or self-expression. Even when suitable products are available, the channel itself feels disconnected from how younger generations want to shop for beauty.
This gap does not exist in the same way in Europe, where pharmacy skincare has long been normalized across age groups and where functional skincare is not seen as incompatible with modernity.
3. Channel economics: why beauty is hard to sell in Chinese pharmacies
There is also a practical reason why beauty has struggled to scale in Chinese pharmacies: the numbers often do not work.
Most Chinese pharmacies operate with limited floor space and rely heavily on high-turnover, high-margin categories such as prescription drugs, OTC medicines, medical devices, and supplements. Skincare, by contrast:
● Requires education
● Has slower inventory turnover
● Demands shelf space and trained staff
Even though China’s pharmacy skincare market has grown rapidly, reaching an estimated RMB 22,25 billion in recent years, it still represents only a small fraction of China’s RMB 1 trillion+ beauty market.
In Europe, pharmacy skincare is the profit engine. Brands invest heavily in pharmacist training, in-store education, and long-term partnerships, making skincare both economically viable and strategically essential for pharmacies.
4. Brand path dependency matters
European dermocosmetics brands were born in pharmacies. Their brand DNA is inseparable from clinical testing, medical endorsement, and pharmacy distribution.
Most Chinese beauty brands followed the opposite path: they scaled through e-commerce, department stores, and specialty beauty retailers. Pharmacies were added later, often as an afterthought, not as a foundational channel.
Distribution is not neutral. Where a brand starts shapes how it is perceived.
Why has China’s pharmacy channel started to heat up over the past year?
Several forces are converging.
1. Rising online acquisition costs and limited offline alternatives
As digital customer acquisition costs continue to rise, beauty brands are increasingly forced to look offline for growth. Yet China’s offline beauty retail ecosystem remains relatively weak, and opening counters in shopping malls comes with high fixed costs, complex operations, and long payback periods.
Against this backdrop, large pharmacy chains , with their dense nationwide networks and existing foot traffic , have emerged as a seemingly efficient alternative for brands seeking physical presence without heavy real estate investment.
2. Regulatory experimentation around cosmetics in pharmacies
In several pilot regions, new regulatory signals have begun allowing pharmacies to sell certain cosmetics-registered (妆字号) products. While still evolving, these policy experiments are gradually lowering the historical barriers between healthcare retail and beauty, making pharmacy distribution more structurally feasible than before.
3. Profit pressure on pharmacies themselves
Pharmacies are also under growing pressure. Economic slowdown has weakened foot traffic and prescription-driven revenue. In the past, many pharmacies relied on high-margin health supplements to sustain profitability. Today, those categories alone are no longer sufficient.
Skincare and beauty products, with relatively higher gross margins and repeat-purchase potential, are increasingly viewed as a necessary addition to help pharmacies rebuild their profit structure.
Will pharmacies become a major beauty channel in China?
With this context in mind, the short answer is: partially, but selectively.
Chinese pharmacies are unlikely to replicate the European model wholesale. However, they can become strategically important for specific categories and brand types.
Where pharmacies have real potential
The strongest opportunities lie in categories that sit at the intersection of health and skincare:
● Sensitive skin and barrier repair
● Post-procedure and post-medical-aesthetic care
● Chronic skin conditions such as acne, eczema, and dermatitis
These are precisely the areas where China’s pharmacy channel is already seeing traction.
Brands such as Winona (薇诺娜) and functional skincare players like Komfy (可复美) have built strong momentum through pharmacy distribution. In recent years, Winona’s pharmacy-channel sales alone have exceeded RMB 9 billion, making it one of the dominant players in this space. Komfy has also rapidly scaled, with pharmacy and medical-channel revenues reaching several billion RMB, driven by post-procedure repair and medical aesthetics aftercare.
These brands share several characteristics: medical or dermatological roots, clearly defined use cases, and long-term investment in pharmacist education.
By contrast, categories driven primarily by aesthetics, trends, or emotional appeal, such as color cosmetics or lifestyle skincare, remain poorly suited to pharmacy settings.
What brands must change to win in pharmacy channels
For brands, entering pharmacies is not about adding another sales outlet. It requires a fundamentally different operating logic.
Product strategy
● Fewer SKUs, clearer indications
● Clinical or quasi-clinical packaging language
● Reduced emphasis on “hero ingredients,” increased emphasis on safety and tolerability
Communication strategy
● Less influencer-centric storytelling
● More clinical data, white papers, and dermatologist consensus
● Education-first content over emotional branding
Channel partnership
● Pharmacist training programs
● Co-developed in-store education systems
● Long-term relationship building rather than short-term sell-in
Talent strategy
● A severe talent gap: Professionals who truly understand both the OTC pharmacy system and the beauty industry are extremely rare in China.
● Online-biased beauty talent: Most existing beauty talent is optimized for digital growth , social media, livestreaming, and e-commerce , rather than regulated healthcare retail.
● Capability rebuilding required: Winning in pharmacy channels requires deliberate investment in cross-disciplinary teams, retraining existing beauty professionals, and creating new roles that bridge medical logic with brand thinking.
Pharmacies are not traffic channels. They are trust channels. Treating them as such requires not only different products and messages, but different people.
A strategic lens for international brands
For European dermocosmetics brands, China’s pharmacy channel may actually be the most coherent entry point conceptually, if not yet in scale.
The challenge is not product-market fit, but consumer mindset. The channel will only grow if Chinese consumers begin to associate pharmacies with skincare solutions, not just medication.
That shift will take time, education, and sustained brand commitment.
Final thought
China will not simply copy Europe’s pharmacy-led beauty model.
But as consumers increasingly seek clinically grounded, problem-solving skincare, pharmacies may become one of the few physical channels capable of hosting that trust , not as the center of beauty retail, but as its most credible edge.
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