On July 7th 2020 we shared the news with our Epic Pharmacy teams of our intention to exit the pharmacy ownership landscape. At that time that was our clear intention but cliches exist for a reason, and as they say the best laid plans etc etc
The reality is that business sales are complicated and what you intend to achieve isn’t always possible as an outcome for a myriad of reasons. An exit from pharmacy ownership for us was never going to be possible via a single transaction, as every pharmacy is a business in its own right and so an overall exit requires many many different transactions, each with its own individual complexities.
This isn’t the space to go into the details of why some things were possible and some weren’t, but the reality is that we’ve come to the end of the runway of what’s possible, and that definitively leaves us remaining as pharmacy owners going forward.
As the headline says, we never actually left the pharmacy ownership space, but there’s a change point for us going forward now that it’s established beyond doubt that we’re here to stay. We’ve largely been acting in caretaker mode for the past 12 months or so through the execution of the succession strategy with the other pharmacy owners within Icon Group, while still of course exercising all of the necessary proprietal oversight required.
Things get a little more dynamic from here though. With all of our business interests and activities now led via our family office Arc31, there’s a new addition to the portfolio with the establishment of Arc31 Pharmacy Management.
While our pharmacies will still be receiving services from Icon’s Pharmacy Management division, we’ll also have our own team liaising with that division, the pharmacy teams, and our customers both existing and new – now that we’re officially still in the game surely no one thinks we’re just going to sit on our hands from here!
The one constant that our decades in business has always delivered is the knowledge that while it’s great to have a plan, it’s how you respond to the disruption of those plans that defines you and sets you apart.
At Arc 31 we’re defined by our values of Agile, Responsible and Courageous, and we’re pumped to be deploying that approach to create our next iteration of innovation and change in the Australian pharmacy landscape.