2019
FarmaHabit: an online pharmacy where families shop by what’s bothering them
Nartex Labs’ natural remedies were sold in pharmacies and supermarkets across Mexico, but the company had no way to sell to families directly. In 2019 we created FarmaHabit with Nartex: the brand, a Shopify store where shoppers start from the condition they want to treat, from bruises to insomnia, and the processes and training the new team needed to run it. The store was open by that summer.
- 31
- health-condition groups to shop by, each with its own image
- 23
- steps of the purchase process mapped, from browsing to delivery
- Client
- FarmaHabit (Nartex Labs)
- Industry
- Retail & Consumer
- Scope
- Brand design · Information architecture · Service design · Platform selection · Store build · Training
- Platform
- Shopify
- Year
- 2019
Challenge
Nartex Labs makes homeopathic medicines and natural health products. In 2019 it had been in the Mexican market for almost 40 years, and its products were on the shelves of more than 20,000 points of sale, from traditional homeopathic pharmacies to supermarkets and pharmacy chains (per Nartex, 2019). What it did not have was a store of its own, where a family could find the right remedy and have it delivered.
People rarely look for a remedy by its name. They look for help with a cold, a sprained ankle, a child who is teething or a night without sleep. A new store had to meet them there, and the business behind it did not exist yet: taking orders and payments, keeping stock, packing and shipping, and a team who had never run an online store.
Approach
Shop by what’s bothering you
We organized the catalog two ways, by product category and by health condition, and made the conditions the front door: “Explorar padecimientos” (explore conditions) led the menu. We grouped related names so shoppers find the same help whatever they call it, 31 groups from acne and allergies to stress and insomnia, and gave each group its own image, a person or a still life on a single-color background.
A brand people can trust at home
We designed the FarmaHabit brand: the logo, the color palette and the guidelines, plus templates and a guide so Nartex’s team could keep producing condition images on their own. The store runs in Spanish and English, with a live chat to the store’s wellness advisors so a shopper can ask before buying.
The business behind the button
We mapped the whole purchase process with Nartex, 23 steps from browsing to the customer’s review of the order, including how a bank payment is confirmed and how an order is picked, packed and shipped. We chose the tools to run it: Shopify for the store, Stock&Buy for inventory and Xero for accounting.
A team ready to run it
We trained Nartex’s new team on the store and on each process, and on Xero, where the accounting team could see sales, stock and payments in one place instead of moving between modules of their older system.
Impact
By August 2019 FarmaHabit was open, welcoming shoppers to “our new site” with a launch promotion, conditions first in the menu and orders tracked online (Internet Archive, August 22, 2019). Nartex Labs had a direct sales channel, an online inventory for its Mexican warehouse and a team trained to run both.
We then built a second store for Nartex Labs, Mayan, for the US market (2019–2020). Seven years on, FarmaHabit is still selling online on Shopify, with shopping by condition still in its menu.