We’ve all been there. You feel a slight headache coming on and decide to pop into the nearest chemist to pick up some Panadol. Chances are, if you’re in Australia, it’s a Chemist Warehouse – and the experience of shopping for the cure is about to make you feel sicker.
Outside, the stores give a hint about the chaos within. Signs scream “DISCOUNT” and “Australia’s Cheapest Chemist!!” The exteriors are painted with bright red, yellow and blue signage, and for anyone confused, enormous arrows point towards the door.
You enter. Inside, the stores have the ambience of a panic attack. The cortisol spike is immediate. The bright colours, the arrows on the ground, the product overwhelm, the scent of chemical fragrances, the music veering between high energy pop such as Katy Perry and dark night of the soul classics such as Snow Patrol’s Chasing Cars (the playlist Chemist Warehouse Remix is available on Spotify) all contribute to the overwhelm.
The stores are usually deep and narrow, featuring shelves packed high to the point of collapse, with everything you didn’t know you needed screaming for your attention. It’s like walking into a canyon covered in fluorescent post-it notes while (somewhat ironically) looking for products that make you feel healthier.
In a Chemist Warehouse, you don’t so much browse as scroll, your body an agitated cursor pinging between a shelf of protein bars and walking frames, weight loss kits and lube. It’s like scrolling through reels – but you are in the reels.
Compounding the experience are other customers in the tiny aisles, searching for fungal cream under the halogen lights. They’re all too close – but that’s because the aisles are too narrow.
The narrow aisles create a distortion that you and the other shoppers have expanded, your girth taking up the width of an entire aisle as you reach to get your tube of soothing balm for mysterious anal lumps and fissures, or a pregnancy test, or incontinence pads. With your entire body taking up an aisle, you have created a retail strait of Hormuz, blocking customers who cannot squeeze around you.
So what was already a faintly humiliating exercise, compounds.
Maybe you only visited the Chemist Warehouse for the Panadol, but that is not all you will leave with. As well as the soothing balm (you cannot find the Panadol), you are juggling sunscreen, chapstick, a hair mask, eye drops, cough syrup, allergy pills and vanilla caramel protein bars. They’re all on special! Maybe you’ll use them one day!
Then it’s time to pay.
Where do you pay? And how to get there without going the wrong way down an aisle, or being blocked by another customer?
And once you find the checkout – who works here? Someone with a lanyard? Where are they? Staff may be hard to find but store security is not. It’s always one person standing near the narrow door, trying to flatten himself against the wall so he doesn’t get in people’s way. Also by the door, a massive queue but nowhere for it to go, so the queue sort of bunches up near the security guy – like a snake that’s just eaten a possum, bulging and in pain. Is there anyone at the checkout? The person you thought worked here because they had a lanyard is just an office worker who happens to be wearing a lanyard, who is also queueing and obviously dissociating, staring ahead, and not moving even when they are called.
Britain – welcome to the Chemist Warehouse experience. The brand’s introduction into the UK is starting small, with five stores being branded and fitted out as Chemist Warehouse; the first outlet is to be operated in north-east London.
It is only fair that Londoners should be warned that the shopping experience is in stark contrast to the other successful Australian retail export Aesop, a high-end skincare brand which Wallpaper magazine celebrated for its “approach to retail design and architecture” as “unique and respectful of community, culture and history”.
Chemist Warehouse is the yang to Aesop’s yin – yet somehow in Australia, we can’t get enough of it. In 20 years, it’s grown into one of Australia’s most dominant retail empires, perfecting the art of aggressive volume selling at competitive prices.
Now, Chemist Warehouse has almost 600 stores across Australia, employs over 21,000 people globally and has already established footholds in New Zealand, Ireland, Dubai and China.
The sheer volume of purchasing power forces wholesale prices down to a level that smaller competitors have difficulty matching on cost.
And with its hectic and chaotic aesthetic – there’s no mistaking it for a Boots.
Brigid Delaney is the author of five books, including The Seeker and the Sage. She can be found on Substack at the Chaos Era
