Pharmacy Daily | Q&A with Wesfarmers’ Richard Pearson

IN AN interview with Pharmacy Daily, Wesfarmers Health Chief Customer Officer Richard Pearson spoke about the pharmacy retail landscape, the company's recent triumphs and the road ahead.

Pharmacy Daily: What were some of the major highlights of 2025?

Richard Pearson: We feel really good about how we've relaunched, modernised and rejuvenated the Priceline brand, and we think that's translating really well in our marketing, but also in terms of our physical stores and website.

We feel from an omnichannel and customer connection point of view, the brand relaunch has been successful.

We're really proud of what we think is a market-leading program on menopause.

There's a huge unmet customer need there, and this really defines where Priceline wins - the combination of excellent pharmacist service and expertise, epitomised by our unique program of training with the Jean Hailes Foundation, combined with what we hope is a market-leading retail product solution with menopause-relevant products, which have been curated by our chief pharmacist.

Our e-commerce business is growing really quickly, and early in 2026, we're going to launch what we intend to be a market-leading app to bring together loyalty, e-commerce, shopping and prescription management and health services management, which will take our digital customer connection to a whole new level.

PD: How would you describe the pharmacy retail competitive landscape?

RP: I think it's really exciting in terms of where the industry is going over the next few years, as pharmacists continue to increase their scope of practice and play an important role in community health, and we expand and grow in the market.

Both from a traditional pharmacy point of view and modernisation of future growth angle, the pharmacy sector is well placed.

PD: Are there any other significant issues on your radar at the moment for the business?

RP: We're ambitious for 2026 and see strong growth in the next year.

We want to be a leading player in the women's health sector.

Obviously, menopause is a strong part of that, but there are other parts of the female health platform that we want to play a stronger part in as well, and that's heavily supported by the governments at state and federal levels - we're onto a positive platform there.

We want to continue to invest in network growth, both in terms of new sites, and investing in the sites we have to modernise and improve - where we are doing those refurbishments, we're seeing really strong results, so that gives us optimism.

We've talked about scope of practice - we want to continue to develop our own capabilities, as well as play a leading role across the industry.

We'll continue to bring new brands and value programs to the retail market, which hopefully will give more and more customers more reasons to shop with us more frequently, which obviously is how we help our franchise business build ever stronger businesses as well.

Read the full interview HERE. JHM