For 50 years, Barone Pharmacy has been a permanent fixture in Sydney’s western suburbs, but the family run business had to reassess their business model to keep up with changing markets.
In 1967, Charlie Barone opened a pharmacy with his brother in Fairfield.
Their father was a migrant vegetable farmer and was determined to see his four sons succeed in his new country.
“We borrowed I think it was probably $6000 back in those days and we opened our first pharmacy in Spencer Street,” Mr Barone says.
“It was a dirt road and we had the first carpeted pharmacy - not many pharmacies had carpet in those days."
But a lot has changed in the pharmaceutical industry over 50 years.
Recent reforms to the PBS mean there isn't as much money in prescription medicine, and pharmacies must expand their available services to continue making a profit.
For a number of years, Barone Pharmacies have had multilingual translation services for non-English speaking customers.
“We now have whole new migrant situations: we have the Assyrian community at the moment, Arabic, the Middle Eastern community...we have Arabic-speaking, Assyrian-speaking staff, pharmacists, that can explain this, and that's vital I think,” Mr Barone says.
They also introduced counselling rooms for patients who want to discuss their treatments in greater depth, and opened an online store that delivers nationwide.
Charlie’s Barone’s son Mario has been a pharmacist for 21 years, and says today’s market is challenging but expanding services helped their business weather increased competition.
“We have to innovate, we've got to always be on our toes and we've always got to innovate and do what we can to provide those services.”
Rick Samimi is the New South Wales branch head of the Pharmacy Guild of Australia and says some members are questioning the sustainability of their businesses.
"This is undoubtedly the most challenging period in the history of pharmacy in Australia,” he says.
Funding from the federal government has become tighter and harder to access and Mr Samimi says discount chemists change the way patients interact with medicine.
“Discounting in fact affects patient's compliance and also trivialises some of the very serious conditions that we are trying to treat,” he says.
Even in this tough climate, the Barone’s are striving to make their business sustainable for many years to come.
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