FONTANA Pharmacy plans to leverage its strong brand name and culture of customer-centricity to penetrate the very competitive Kingston market.

The Chang family held a grand opening for its fourth Fontana branch on the island, its first in Kingston, last week. The new outlet is located on East Kings House Road in Barbican Square, in leased commercial space formerly occupied by harberdashery business Azmart, which Fontana acquired in January.

Fontana Pharmacy director Ray Therrien said the Azmart deal gave the company a great opportunity to position itself in Kingston.

“The previous owner, the Azans, did a great job running Azmart. They built a very strong customer base and have a really strong team here,” Therrien told Sunday Finance.

“They were in a situation where they wanted to do other things and approached us, and we jumped on it,” he said.

Fontana has been in Mandeville since 1968, and Montego Bay and Savanna-la-Mar for 20 and five years, respectively. It will launch a fifth store in Ocho Rios later this year. Fontana is arguably Jamaica’s largest non-government pharmacy. Designed to be the ultimate one-stop shopping experience for customers, the stores stock some 20,000 different items. A wide range of gifts, toys, back-to-school supplies, household articles, in addition to the core pharmaceutical products can be found under a single roof at each of the four locations.

“A lot of people say they are customer-focused, but we just don’t say it, we really walk the walk,” Anne Chang, Fontana Pharmacy director, said. “The whole Fontana Pharmacy is a culture based on customer service.”

At the grand opening of the Barbican store last week, customers were offered samples, giveaways, gift baskets and up to 70- per cent off certain items. What’s more, the company featured its new “What you want, we’ve got it” jingle during an outside broadcast with popular radio personality Richie B, with the tune highlighting the value proposition that Fontana believes it will be providing to the marketplace.

It’s a formula that will add value to the Kingston marketplace and allow Fontana to maintain its competitive edge, said Chang. Specifically, she noted that a strong focus on family and children has helped Fontana build its customer base over the years.

“We find a lot of our adult customers were actually children that had shopped at some point in Mandeville,” Chang said. “So we recognise that we need to follow them as they grow, because the kids actually drive a lot of the parents’ purchasing.”

Therrien said the company has made significant investment in renovating the cosmetics area at the new Barbican store, and will soon add a business centre at the 12,000 square-foot facility.

“Over the course of the last four months, we have spent a lot of time looking at the operations and things we want to improve on here,” Therrien said.

He said the store may also add outlets for Devon House Ice Cream and Cafe Blue, a move which has proved successful in Montego Bay.

“It is somethng that a lot of our customers have asked for here and we are working on adding that to our mix at this particular location,” he said.