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How long have you been working with The Bush Chemist? I’m coming up to my 10-year work anniversary in April. However, I’ve grown up in a pharmacy environment. My mum is a pharmacist, so I’ve worked on and off in retail pharmacy for most of my life. What is your role at The Bush Chemist, and what does it involve? I have a couple of different roles. Primarily I work three days a week as the Chief Marketing Officer for our group of nine stores. The other two days I work in-store at The Bush Chemist Tumut \\\\\\\[in the NSW Riverina region\\\\\\\] as a pharmacy assistant. I really love that I have both the hands-on experience of working with customers, and then have the opportunity to apply this at a strategic group level as well. I think it’s really important for people in marketing roles to understand how processes and ideas will work physically in-store. \\\\\\\[The\\\\\\\] nine stores \\\\\\\[are\\\\\\\] across eight locations: Wagga, Tumut, Tumbarumba, Batlow, Griffith, Leeton, Cootamundra and Young. What are the company’s values? The Bush Chemist was created to represent our ethos about genuine old-fashioned country service, our love \\\\\\\[for\\\\\\\] and commitment to our local communities, while providing the very latest innovations and technology to provide our customers with the best possible health outcomes. What kinds of services are available at The Bush Chemist? We have a huge range of services across all nine stores, including: • Sachet and Webster-Pak medication packing group-wide. • Medication compounding – three of our stores have compounding labs, which service all our locations. • Free blood pressure and blood glucose testing. • Free home delivery. • Vaccination-accredited pharmacists in all locations. • The Bush Chemist Rewards Club. • Photographic services in two locations. • Health foods and natural medicines. • All our stores are agents for the NDSS. • Frozen healthy meal range, available in Tumut. Plus, much more! What are some of the challenges you face in your role? The biggest challenge for me every day is continuing to keep up with our major competitors, namely the big discounters in the community pharmacy sector. We endeavour to meet them in pricing as much as we can, while still maintaining all our other services and creating maximum value for our customers. From a broader perspective, 2020 threw some new challenges our way. The January bushfire disaster affected many of our stores, with two having to close due to the towns being evacuated, and our other stores having to step in and try to help the evacuees and emergency personnel with their medications and first-aid needs during this time. We’d just overcome this, then Covid-19 hit, an ongoing challenge that we’re all still trying to navigate our way through. My role changed dramatically in this time, as our focus was less on ‘what’s on sale’ to focusing on how we can support our customers’ physical and mental health throughout these times. I’ve certainly learned to be more adaptable in my role. What have been some of your career highlights so far? Completing my degree has definitely been a major highlight for me. I’ve just recently completed my Bachelor of Business (Marketing) through Charles Sturt University. I studied this by distance for six years while working full time, and wearing many other hats. Emma Alchin, CHIEF MARKETING OFFICER, Working in marketing while studying has given me the best of both the hands-on experience and the theory and knowledge of tertiary education. I’m so excited to see how this will help me improve my role across the group. What are your hobbies/interests outside of work? I’m a foodie at heart. I love to cook, and nothing beats a cheese plater and a good glass of wine. I’m also very musical. I play the guitar, I sing, and I’m a total musical theatre nerd. My other major passion in life is to travel – I truly believe that the best education we can give ourselves is to travel and experience new and different cultures. I’ve been fortunate enough to do quite a bit of this in my life so far. What do you have planned for the future, for yourself? Now that I’ve finished studying, I’ve set myself some goals so I can achieve all those things I’ve had on hold for six years. They are: learn another language, probably Spanish or Italian; plant and grow a good veggie/herb garden (every good cook needs a good garden); travel more (although Covid has put a bit of a dampener on this, my husband and I want to do a road trip around NSW and see more of our beautiful country); and make more time for my music. What are you most excited for, in terms of the future for The Bush Chemist? I’m excited for our group to continue to embrace the many advances in technology that are happening in the pharmacy world, while still being the down-to-earth, country pharmacies that we are. I’m really passionate about working with our local communities, and I know there’s so much more we can offer. I plan to be part of the team that forges a bigger community pharmacy presence in people’s everyday lives in the future. 6 MINUTES WITH ... 23 THE BUSH CHEMIST RETAIL PHARMACY ASSISTANTS • MAR 2021