Competing with Online Pet Pharmacies
Veterinary practices cannot beat online pet pharmacies on price and should stop trying. What they can win on is convenience, timing and trust: dispensing at the moment of the recommendation, setting up repeat supply before the client goes looking, and being the source of advice about the product.
Pharmacy income used to be dependable. It is not any more, because the client can now buy the same product from an online pet pharmacy, often cheaper, usually delivered. Most practices respond either by discounting, which erodes the margin they were trying to protect, or by making prescriptions awkward, which erodes trust. Neither works.
What follows is what does, and none of it involves competing on price.
Accept the price argument is lost
Online pet pharmacies buy at volumes a single practice cannot, hold stock centrally rather than in a cupboard behind reception, and run deliberately thin margins to win the customer. You are not going to beat that, and a discount that closes half the gap costs you real money while still losing the comparison.
This matters because it changes what you are competing on. Convenience, timing and trust are all winnable. Price is not. Our piece on why discounting hurts veterinary practices covers the wider version of this trap.
Win on the moment, not the price
The single largest lever is the gap between recommending a product and the client having it. If the recommendation happens in the consulting room and the product is dispensed in the same room, you win almost every time, because nobody goes home and orders something they already have.
Every step you add to that journey is an opportunity to lose the sale. Sending the client to reception adds one. Telling them it needs ordering adds several, and effectively hands them to a competitor who can deliver by Thursday.
Set up repeat supply before they go looking
Most pharmacy revenue that leaks online is repeat medication, not one off treatment. A client on long term medication will eventually work out that a subscription arrives at the door for less effort than a phone call to you.
The answer is to get there first. When a patient goes onto long term medication, set the repeat schedule up at that appointment, with reminders that arrive before the client runs out. A client whose medication arrives reliably does not go shopping. Reminder management is the mechanism, and it is worth doing properly rather than as a spreadsheet someone updates on Fridays.
Write the prescription without friction
When a client does ask for a written prescription, give it to them quickly and pleasantly. In many jurisdictions you are required to, and in all of them a grudging response costs you the relationship for the sake of one transaction the client will complete anyway.
It is more useful to treat each request as information. A client asking for a script is telling you your supply route was too slow, too expensive or too much effort. That is worth knowing, and it is fixable.
Be the reason the product is trusted
The one thing an online pharmacy cannot supply is the judgement behind the recommendation. Clients buy parasite prevention online because it is a commodity to them. It stops being a commodity when someone explains why this one, for this animal, in this part of the country, at this time of year.
That conversation takes thirty seconds and it is the difference between a product and a recommendation. It also has to happen in the room, which is another argument for the clinician dispensing rather than reception.
What should I measure?
Three numbers, monthly. What share of pharmacy revenue is repeat rather than one off. How many written prescriptions you issue, and whether that number is rising. And the gap between a product being recommended and dispensed, which you can sample rather than measure exactly.
If repeat revenue is falling while written prescriptions rise, you are losing long term clients to subscription supply, and the fix is your reminder and repeat process rather than your pricing.
Where the software helps
Most of this is process rather than technology, but two parts are hard without decent systems: reliable repeat reminders that fire before the client runs out, and dispensing from the consulting room rather than the front desk. Both need the medication history, the stock and the invoice to be in one place. Our guide to veterinary inventory management covers the stock half of that.
