Australia has no French pharmacy: what that means for a dermocosmetics brand

A European dermocosmetics brand selling skincare in Australia loses the advocate it relies on at home. In France, the pharmacist recommends the product at the shelf. In Australia, the pharmacist advises on medicines, and skincare is sold as a separate retail category, so the brand has to supply its own advice from the first day of trading.

We explore the differences in the French pharmacy, the Japanese drugstore and the Australian pharmacy, using published market data and our own observation of Australian stores. It then sets out who gives skincare advice in Australia today, the three routes to market a pharmacy skincare brand can choose from, and why we think the entry plan has to answer the advice question before the shelf question.

Scale is the first comparison a European brand needs. The Australian Bureau of Statistics, the national statistics agency, counted 27.9 million people at 31 March 2026 (ABS, September 2026). France has more than twice as many pharmacies as Australia (Pharmacy Guild of Australia, January 2026; Cosmeticobs, IQVIA data, 2023), and the two networks were built to do very different jobs.

How do French pharmacies sell skincare?

In France, the pharmacy is one of the main channels for beauty. Pharmacy accounts for about 20 per cent of the French beauty and personal care market, and around 200 cooperatives give independent pharmacies the buying power of a chain (Beauty Independent). Many dermocosmetics brands, meaning skincare brands built on dermatological science and sold with a health positioning, are sold only through pharmacies. The modern French pharmacy is laid out like a beauty store, with skincare at the front and prescriptions at the back (same source).

The pharmacist's advice is part of what the shopper buys. In 2020, French dermocosmetics sales were EUR 2.7 billion, and EUR 2.1 billion of that was sold through pharmacies. In the same data, 44 per cent of dermocosmetics buyers said they valued the pharmacist's advice at the point of purchase (Cosmeticobs, IQVIA data, 2020). The figures are from 2020, which is the most recent year for which we found this split published.

The advice does not always come from the pharmacist. In the largest French pharmacies, skincare advice is often given by advisers employed by the brands rather than by pharmacy staff (Le Quotidien du Pharmacien). This detail matters for a brand looking at Australia, because it shows that French brands already pay for advice inside a retailer's store when the store cannot provide it.

Japanese drugstore skincare: a second model

Japan shows that pharmacy-led advice can take more than one form. Japanese drugstore sales reached JPY 10.03 trillion in the 2024 financial year, up 9.0 per cent, across 23,723 stores, according to the Japan Association of Chain Drug Stores, the industry body for drugstore chains. Beauty care, which covers cosmetics and haircare, accounted for JPY 1.83 trillion, or 18.2 per cent of drugstore sales (Yakuji Nippo, November 2025). Since 2009, staff holding Japan's registered seller qualification have been able to sell second-class and third-class over-the-counter medicines without a pharmacist (Nippon.com, 2014).

In our observation, the Japanese drugstore is strong on its selection of skincare and haircare, and the advice is built into the store rather than given by a pharmacist. In-store signage, product explanations and consumer feedback do the work that a French pharmacist does in person. Japan therefore shows a model in which the store itself carries the advice.

What does an Australian pharmacy do?

The Australian pharmacist is a medicines adviser. Skin enters the pharmacist's role only as a clinical condition: in September 2024, the New South Wales Government announced plans for pharmacists to treat mild to moderate acne (NSW Health, September 2024). Skincare as a beauty category sits in the same store, but it is sold by retail staff, not by the pharmacist.

Australian pharmacies must be owned by pharmacists under state and territory law, and the details vary by state. In Victoria, for example, only registered pharmacists, or companies wholly owned and directed by registered pharmacists, may hold an interest in a pharmacy business, and each may hold an interest in no more than five (Victorian Pharmacy Authority, December 2025). National pharmacy banners therefore operate through franchising rather than company-owned stores.

One of those banners competes on price at national scale. Chemist Warehouse, a discount pharmacy chain owned by Sigma Healthcare, has 561 Australian stores, and its network sales grew 15.9 per cent in the 2026 financial year (Inside Retail, August 2026). Sigma also plans to open Chemist Warehouse stores in the United Kingdom (Business News Australia). When luxury brands hesitated to sell inside Chemist Warehouse stores, the chain built Ultra Beauty, a separate store-in-store for prestige beauty (Inside Retail).

In the Chemist Warehouse stores we have visited, customer service sits in two places: the pharmacist at the back of the store for medicines, and the staff at the checkout at the front. There is no dedicated skincare adviser on the shop floor. A consumer comparison site describes the beauty experience in Australian pharmacy in similar terms, as transactional rather than consultative (ShopBack, 2026), although that source is a shopping guide and should be read as indicative only.

• Who gives skincare advice. In France, the pharmacist, or a brand-employed adviser in the largest pharmacies. In Japan, the store, through signage, product explanations and consumer feedback. In Australia, no one by default, because the pharmacist advises on medicines.
• Where skin fits. In France, dermocosmetics are a core pharmacy category. In Japan, beauty care is 18.2 per cent of drugstore sales. In Australia, skincare is a retail category, and skin is a clinical condition for the pharmacist.
• Store layout. In France, beauty sits at the front of the store and prescriptions at the back. In Japan, the store carries wide ranges of skincare and haircare. In Australia, beauty sits in the same store, with prestige brands in a separate store-in-store such as Ultra Beauty.

Can a brand recreate the French pharmacy experience in Australia?

A brand can recreate the French pharmacy shelf in Australia, but the consumer experience does not follow it. The fixtures and the range can be copied, but the experience that sells dermocosmetics in France also depends on a trained person who matches the product to the shopper's skin, and that person is not part of the Australian pharmacy.

Entering Australia therefore means bringing every element of the experience, including the advice and the team training behind it, as well as the store and the shelf. A brand that plans only the shelf arrives with the part of its French model that is easiest to copy and without the part that made it work.

Who gives skincare advice in Australia today?

Without a pharmacist to recommend it, a skincare brand reaches Australian shoppers through one of three routes. Each route teaches the shopper about the brand, and each one hands part of the brand's story to someone else.

• Price. A discount puts the product in the shopper's hand, and the product teaches by trial. The brand risks the first price becoming its perceived value.
• Influencers. Routines and reviews on social media reach shoppers quickly. The brand gives up control of the claims made, and of who the routine is suitable for.
• Trained advice. A trained person matches the product to the shopper. The brand pays for trained staff on the shop floor.

The influencer route carries a compliance risk as well as a brand risk. In a 2023 sweep by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), the national consumer regulator, 81 per cent of the influencer posts reviewed were found to be potentially misleading (SmartCompany, May 2023), and significant penalties apply under the Australian Consumer Law, the national law that governs advertising and consumer protection. Two studies presented at the European Academy of Dermatology and Venereology Congress in 2026 found misleading claims in 94.7 per cent of viral Korean skincare routines on TikTok, and skin reactions in patients who had copied routines from social media (Dermatology Times, 2026). In February 2024, the consumer organisation CHOICE reported influencers promoting age-inappropriate skincare to children (CHOICE, February 2024).

Some Australian retailers are investing in trained advice. Mecca, an Australian prestige beauty retailer, runs a training platform called MECCAversity, and its retail team completed more than 105,000 hours of training content in six months in 2021 (Inside Retail, 2021). Myer, a national department store group, is building its new Sydney beauty hall around more than 200 services (Ragtrader).

Online marketplaces offer a fourth path to a first purchase. An advertisement can link directly to a marketplace listing, and next-day delivery removes the wait, so a shopper can move from seeing a product to owning it very quickly. The brand writes the advertisement and the listing, so it keeps control of its claims, but no one checks whether the product suits the shopper's skin before the purchase.

Three routes to market for selling skincare in Australia

A pharmacy skincare brand entering Australia has three realistic retail routes, and each one assumes something different about where the advice will come from.

1. Discount pharmacy. A chain such as Chemist Warehouse offers national reach and high traffic. The route assumes that shoppers will choose the brand on price and recognition, because there is no skincare adviser on the floor.
2. Prestige beauty retail. Mecca, Sephora, the international beauty retailer, and Adore Beauty, an Australian online beauty retailer that has opened physical stores, offer positioning and trained retail staff. The route assumes that the brand fits a prestige range and that the retailer's consultants will learn the brand well enough to recommend it.
3. A store-in-store. A format such as Ultra Beauty offers pharmacy traffic with a prestige setting. The route assumes that a smaller footprint with a premium presentation is enough to separate the brand from the discount shelf around it.

One compliance condition applies to all three routes. In Australia, primary sunscreens are regulated as therapeutic goods and must be listed or registered in the Australian Register of Therapeutic Goods before they can be supplied, under the rules of the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), the national regulator of medicines and medical products (TGA, August 2025). A dermocosmetics range with sun protection or therapeutic claims has to plan for this before it plans the shelf.

Decide who gives the advice before choosing the shelf

Our position is that the entry plan for a pharmacy skincare brand has to say who gives the advice in Australia before it says which shelf the brand sits on. The evidence in the previous sections points in one direction. The French model sells on advice, the Australian pharmacy is not built to give it, and the routes that fill the gap each transfer part of the brand's story to someone else.

The realistic options for the advice are trained brand staff, a beauty retailer's consultants, or content that does the explaining, as the Japanese drugstore does through signage and consumer feedback. Each option carries a different cost, and the choice of option shapes the choice of retail partner.

A brand can keep control of its story in Australia in five ways:

• by paying for brand-trained advisers inside its retail partners, as French brands already do in the largest French pharmacies
• by supplying the retailer's training, so the retailer's own team explains the brand in the brand's words
• by owning the source content, such as skin-type guidance and dermatologist-reviewed routines that shoppers and creators can be directed to
• by briefing and contracting creators on claims and disclosure, within the Australian Consumer Law and, for sunscreens or therapeutic claims, the TGA's advertising rules
• by setting the price floor deliberately, so that the first trial does not fix the brand's perceived value

What would make this position wrong?

The strongest case against our position is that Australian shoppers may not want skincare advice at the point of purchase. We found no Australian survey that measures how much shoppers value in-store skincare advice. The only measured figure in this article is the French one, and it is from 2020.

The market also offers evidence that price-led beauty works at scale. Chemist Warehouse grew its network sales by 15.9 per cent in the 2026 financial year without skincare advisers on the floor. The Korean brand d'Alba ranked fourth in Amazon Australia's face serum category in late 2023 and is now sold through Sephora, Adore Beauty and the Asian beauty chain W Cosmetics (Mann Publications, December 2023; Adore Beauty; W Cosmetics), which shows that a brand can build sales in Australia before any advice is offered.

Mecca's investment in training may be a signal of what Australian consumers want, but the evidence does not yet settle that question. What would change our view is Australian data showing that shoppers who buy without advice return for a second purchase at the same rate as shoppers who were advised.

Common questions

Can French pharmacy skincare brands be sold in Australian pharmacies?

French pharmacy skincare brands can be sold in Australian pharmacies, including discount chains and store-in-store formats such as Ultra Beauty. The difference is that Australian pharmacists advise on medicines rather than skincare, so the brand has to arrange its own advice, through trained staff or through its own content.

Do pharmacists in Australia give skincare advice?

Australian pharmacists advise on medicines, and they treat skin only as a clinical condition, such as acne, which New South Wales plans to add to pharmacist scope. Skincare as a beauty category is sold by retail staff. In the Chemist Warehouse stores we have visited, there is no dedicated skincare adviser on the shop floor.

Does sunscreen need TGA approval in Australia?

Primary sunscreens, meaning products whose main purpose is protection from ultraviolet radiation, are therapeutic goods in Australia. They must be listed or registered in the Australian Register of Therapeutic Goods before supply. Many secondary sunscreens, such as cosmetics with sun protection, are not therapeutic goods if they meet the TGA's exclusion criteria.

What is Ultra Beauty in Australian pharmacies?

Ultra Beauty is a store-in-store for prestige beauty brands, created by Chemist Warehouse because luxury brands hesitated to sell inside its discount pharmacy stores.

How do Japanese drugstores sell skincare?

Japanese drugstores carry wide ranges of skincare and haircare, and beauty care accounted for 18.2 per cent of drugstore sales in the 2024 financial year. Advice is built into the store through signage, product explanations and consumer feedback, rather than given in person by a pharmacist.

Where an entry plan starts

The first page of an Australian entry plan for a pharmacy skincare brand names who gives the advice, who trains them and who pays for it. The choice of channel and partner follows from that answer, and our Brand Introduction to Australia service starts with the same question.