DROMAYOR

DROMAYOR

Type	Privately Held
ISIN	🆔
Industry	Pharmaceutical
Fate	Sold by divisions.
Founded 📆	9 April 1948, in Pereira
Founder 👔	Héctor Villa Osorio
Headquarters 🏙️	Bogotá, Colombia
Area served 🗺️
Revenue🤑	US$200 Million (annual)
Members
Number of employees	4000
Divisions	Dromayor Bogotá. Dromayor Medellín. Dromayor Pereira. Dromayor Barranquilla. Drogas Tolima Drogas Caldas
Subsidiaries	Superpharma. Drogas Don Saludero. Ophalac. Anglopharma. Farmacias Céspedes. Drolicores.
🌐 Website	[ ]
📇 Address
📞 telephone

Dromayor was a pharmaceutical conglomerate specializing in the distribution of pharmaceutical and consumer products in Colombia. It became the largest distributor of pharmaceuticals in the country.

History

The company was started by Héctor Villa Osorio in April 1948 in the city of Pereira when he opened a drugstore called Farmacia Americana in the center of the city. Subsequently, realizing that it was a good business not only to sell directly to the client, but also to distribute medicines to his colleagues, in 1951 he founded the organization's first distribution warehouse, Drogas Caldas.

Due to the shortening of telegraph messages, the company's title was always transmitted via telegraph as Dromayor, short for Droguistas al por Mayor, and the name was quickly spread and liked and therefore adopted as the company's name.

In the 1960s the company established businesses in the capital Bogotá and the cities of Cali, Neiva and Pasto, and in the 1970s it expanded to Ibagué, Medellín, Villavicencio, Ipiales, Barranquilla and Sincelejo, cities in which it used both the name of Dromayor and that of Drogas Tolima, Drogas Sucre and Droguistas de Ipiales. In the 1980s it inaugurated distribution centers in Bucaramanga and Manizales, and in the 1990s it began to operate in Zipaquirá, Cartagena and Cúcuta. At its peak, the company served more than 10,000 clients weekly.

In the mid-1990s the company founded its own pharmaceutical labs to produce generics, called Ophalac and Bioquifar. Both companies were sold in 2014 to Grupo Bioquifar.

Several attempts were made to internationalize the company through a merger with a multinational company, but due to several financial crises, like the global 2008 financial crisis, that was not possible. The company also owned and operated 240 drugstores using three branded chains of drugstores, "Farmacias Céspedes", "Superpharma" and "Drogas Don Saludero". These, along with the Medellín Distribution Center, were sold in 2014 to Unidrogas, a smaller local company.

The other major hubs were sold to different local players. Thus ending the 67-year-old historic company that developed and spearheaded the pharmaceutical industry in the country.

References

This article "Dromayor" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:Dromayor. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.

---