APOTEK K-24, A PHARMACY THAT NEVER CLOSED

Bad experience can create business opportunity. Gideon Hartono, a doctor born in Yogyakarta, once found it hard to get medicine at night. Meanwhile, the need of medicine disregards the time. Not only during the night, even during the public holiday in which many stores are closed, the need of medicine cannot be left as well. From that experience, an idea came up to establish a pharmacy that opens for 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and 365 days a year, or also known as a pharmacy that never closes all the time. Until now, there are many pharmacies that open for 24 hours but most of them will also be closed during national holiday, including Ied or Christmas.

That idea was realIzed when Gideon established his first Apotek K-24 outlet on Jl. Magelang 24, Yogyakarta on October 24, 2002. The lure of pharmacy that opens for 24 hours with complete medicine was quite interesting to attract people to visit his pharmacy. In less than six months, the first branch was launched in Jl. Gejayan on March 24, 2003 and the third outlet was launched on August 24 in the same year. In 2005, Apotek K-24 was started to be franchised. On the day of the third anniversary, the outlets owned by franchisee (and two more outlets owned by Gideon) was officially launched by setting the record to open seven pharmacy outlets at once from MURI (Indonesia World Record Museum).

On August 24, 2008, Apotek K-24 opens 24 new pharmacies simultaneously in various area in Indonesia in which the official launching concentrated in Bogor. This simultaneous launching with more outlets set the record from MURI (Indonesia World Record Museum) again. The more amount of outlets launched is simply because the franchise offer. Until August 2008, the number of pharmacy outlets had reached 79 outlets. “We target on 2010 that Apotek K-24 will have 500 outlets,” said Wenny Tri Suryani, the Franchise Manager of PT. K-24 Indonesia some times ago.

Apotek K-24 offers its franchise with invesment fee for about Rp. 650 million.That investment package includes franchise fee for Rp. 60 million which is valid for 6 years period. The royalty fee is considered to be low, which is just 1.2%. Turnover can be achieved in less than three years.