API chief hopes he has modern-day formula for an age-old retail trade

Australian Pharmaceutical Industries chief executive Stephen Roche. Photo: Rebecca Hallas

EARLIER this month Stephen Roche crawled into bed with soapie star Ada Nicodemou and another fetching young woman who is often spied on the red carpet. Any romantic mood was probably killed by the hundreds of people watching them, the live TV audience and the fact the bed was situated in the middle of Sydney's bustling Martin Place, but it helped deliver to bemused onlookers a powerful message about postnatal and antenatal depression.

Stretched out on a pink bed and lying under hot pink bedsheets, Roche was a long way from the often stuffy and staid world of your archetypal pharmacy with its old men in white coats standing on raised platforms and typing small labels onto even smaller bottles of pills.

The public event, a record attempt at the world's biggest breakfast in bed, was even further away from Roche's first career out of school, plumbing, but goes to the heart of his strategy to turn around Australian Pharmaceutical Industries from being viewed simply as a pharmacy group to a specialist retailer that is aimed directly at women and which leads the country in health, beauty and wellbeing products.

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Stephen Roche with some materials at Priceline focusing on women customers. Photo: Rebecca Hallas

Chief executive since 2006 of the 102-year-old API, Roche has launched a revamp of the group's retail arm, Priceline, changing both the in-store layout, categories and focus - as well as its logo - to better pitch itself to female shoppers.

It's a long way from when Priceline was better known as a simple pharmacy selling a grab bag of disjointed products from nappies and adhesive plasters to chocolate and various homewares.

''Priceline [in the past] wasn't necessarily centred around beauty. It was about some opportunities, it was homewares for example, a whole range of things, which was relevant at the time to what it was,'' says Roche.

''The transition here is to move into health, beauty and wellbeing and then to reinforce that to customers as to what it means and why you should shop there.

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API chief hopes he has modern-day formula for an age-old retail trade