Farmácia Raia, one of the largest pharmacy chains in Brazil, was created by the Italian Giovanni Baptista Raia, who arrived in the country in 1895.
He was born in 1879 in Viggiano, province of Potenza, in the region of Basilicata, which is in the south of Italy, on the way from Nápoles, in the Tyrrhenian Sea, to the Taranto Peninsula, in the Ionian Sea.
Take a virtual tour of Viggiano
The Italian immigrant was 16 years old when he arrived in Brazil, where he later trained as a pharmacist, the same profession as his brother Luiggi Raia.
The brothers soon realized that customer loyalty in their professional field depended a lot on the way they were served at the counter.
Therefore, João (Brazilian name) decided to put his welcoming ideas into practice and on August 3, 1905, at the age of 26, he opened in Araraquara, interior of São Paulo, the Pharmacia Raia.
Comprehensive customer care
The big and imposing ones pharmacy cabinets, carved in rosewood, attracted attention. But the real difference was the humanization of the service.
At the time, pharmacies had a comprehensive social role, often replacing basic medical care.
Thus, Raia deepened the relationship model focused on the figure of the pharmacist, who handcrafted the medication prescribed by the doctor.
Raia's hallmarks were his ability to relate to customers and his honesty in his job as a pharmacist. For him, people's needs were above any sale, a concept that guaranteed loyalty to his establishment.
In terms of special service, it is worth highlighting the figure of Herculaneum de Oliveira, an employee who inherited excellence in dealing with people who came to the pharmacy from João Baptista.
Farmácia Raia went through two pandemics
Respect for customers became even more evident just over a decade after the pharmacy opened in 1918, during the outbreak of Spanish flu. At that time, John the Baptist gained fame by keeping the pharmacy open 24 hours a day.
In 2020, more than a century after its inauguration, the Damn streak faced the second epidemic in its history, this time being the Covid-19 pandemic. In the midst of the new crisis, the company not only continued to grow, with the opening of 240 stores, but also helped the population again.
The company allocated R$ 25 million to actions to combat the new coronavirus in Brazil, such as donating resources to 50 philanthropic hospitals in small and medium-sized cities, in addition to donating 10 thousand boxes of medicines to the public network in the State of São Paulo and R$ 600 thousand to purchase basic food baskets and masks.
From the interior of São Paulo to Brazil
In the early years of the last century, the pharmacy chain opened by João Baptista Raia began its expansion across the country. With the arrival of multinational laboratories and the rapid industrialization of medicines, he maintained personalized service as a hallmark, without losing agility.
The second store opened in 1931, in Araçatuba and in 1937 the chain began to expand throughout the interior of São Paulo. In 1951, the Raia Pharmacy arrived in the capital. Customer demands increased and in the following years Rede Droga Raia also began to sell perfumery products.
In the 2000s, the chain expanded to other states, opening branches in Rio de Janeiro, Minas Gerais and Paraná. In 2004, online sales began.
In 2011 Farmácia Raia merged with Drugsail, another large company in the sector, starting RD. With this, the brand reached states such as Santa Catarina, Goiás and Mato Grosso do Sul and started the Much Mais Raia Loyalty Program, expanding benefits to registered customers.
Fidelity to history
Today the chain remains faithful to its history of good customer relations, which gave rise to the slogan “Pleasure in Caring”. Engineer and businessman Antônio Carlos Pipponzi, grandson of João Baptista and current president of the Board of Directors of Raia Drogasil (RD).
“My professional history is the history of this company”, says Pipponzi, son of Arturo Pipponzi, who in turn was the son-in-law of João Baptista Raia.
At the beginning of the 80s, Antônio Carlos Pipponzi was responsible for modernizing the pharmacy network, by implementing commercial automation. The process was fundamental to the growth of Farmácia Raia.
The company, currently valued at R$22 billion, is the country's largest in the drugstore segment, with more than 2.300 stores in 23 states, 40 employees and gross revenue of R$21,2 billion in 2020.
Numbers that are the result of the special care that that Italian pharmacist dedicated to his first customers, 116 years ago, in the interior of São Paulo.
By Roberto Schiavon/Italianism
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