For almost four decades, Sweden was one of few countries in the world with a government run monopoly on pharmacies, banning private retail of pharmaceuticals. When a new centre-right government was elected in 2006, one of its promises was to abolish the monopoly and sell of most of the state-owned pharmacies. This plan was put into action in 2009. Private competition was allowed in late 2009, and a majority of the government-owned pharmacies were rebranded during January and February 2010 as they were transferred to new owners.
The newly privatized pharmacies have been grouped into five new chains. There were also a few actors that have entered the market without acquiring any state-owned pharmacies, but many of them quickly realized that the prospects of reaching profitability were bleak.
Before privatization, all 945 pharmacies in the country were operated by one state-owned company, Apoteket AB. 615 of them were sold, while 330 stayed with Apoteket AB. "Apoteket" means "The Pharmacy", and Apoteket AB holds a trademark on the definite form of the Swedish word for pharmacy ("Apoteket"), while the indefinite form ("apotek") can be used by anyone. Hence, almost all new entrants have included the word "apotek" in their name. They have also gone for remarkably similar visual identies, with most of them using green as signature colour and some variation of a green cross as their symbol.
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| The old pharmacy logo from the monopoly era. |
The logo above was used by all pharmacies before deregulation. It contained a very stylized version of the bowl of Hygieia, a snake coiling around a bowl. Apoteket claims this symbol was first introduced in 1972, although it probably went through some minor changes after that. The typeface used above is called Formata.
All the new identites after the jump.
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