Why Community Pharmacy Owned By Civil Servants Don't Make Good Profit

Community pharmacy

There are so many community pharmacies in Nigeria. Many are doing well in terms of profit. However, there are some sets of community pharmacies that tend to struggle. They are mostly community pharmacies owned by pharmacists in the civil service.

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The regulation in Nigeria does not allow one pharmacist to own two or more community pharmacies. It also forbade a hospital pharmacy or other pharmacist in other sectors from owning a community pharmacy. To bypass this regulation, another pharmacist can provide the licence for the community pharmacy while the fund is provided by the owner.

Community Pharmacist In Civil Service

Most pharmacists in the civil service that own community pharmacy business finds it difficult to break in. They cannot compete with those pharmacies that are in community service full time.

The Problem

There are two problems I have observed with civil servants running their own community pharmacy. They are management and time. Let us look at each of them.

Management

They said practice makes perfect. That is the case with pharmacy. Most pharmacists in the civil service run their respective government department based on the past management and government procedure. Failure to adhere to it may lead to getting queried. They live to believe this managerial method is the best and that is why the government adopted it. So they follow judiciously without digging deeper why such a method of administration was adopted.

They end up bringing such processes to their own community pharmacy business. They failed to realise that both businesses cannot survive with the same business model. And that a better model can be adopted even in the government department if only the government is flexible enough. The end result is that the community pharmacy business finds it difficult to compete with neighbouring pharmacies.

Time

Don't get it twisted, nobody can run your business like you do. That is because the control coming from the management superseded any coming from any staff. And there will not be enough time on your part to run the business. You go to your civil service job and barely have time for other important things.

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You need time to stock, contact sales representatives, wholesale outlets and other business partners. You cannot have those times because your civil service is taking up the time. At the end, the shop does not have all the basic drugs.

Solution

What can be done? Quit your civil service job? So many have done that in the past. However, that will be too extreme. Employ capable hands. Employ enough hands. And give them power to carry out important business functions and decisions when you are not around.

Make yourself always available online. Invest in software to make the management easy and flexible. And reward loyalty at any given time. And follow what other successful community pharmacy are doing and not what the government is doing.