Q&A: Help is on the way

OTC supplier Help Remedies is trying to break through the brands at Duane Reade and Target. Drug Store News sat down with Help visionary and CEO Richard Fine to discuss branding.


Drug Store News: What is the Help Remedies proposition?


Richard Fine: Help is totally different from any [other healthcare brand] the shopper is seeing in the category at this time. They pick it up; it feels different. When you think about people who are in their 20s or 30s who are high-income and better-educated, that kind of shopper is responding to environmental concerns or [a need for] simplification. Nobody is pushing the idea of simplifying your [health]. [And with check-stand positioning], we’re initially going to interrupt people on a trip where very often they were not shopping for an existing OTC product. 


DSN: Why young people?


Fine: People in their 20s and 30s, they don’t engage in [OTC healthcare]. For the most part, they’re not brand-loyal. [For] the 25-year-olds, there’s nothing there for them. The way the category has been thinking about new products and innovation, it’s all fishing where the fishes are, but that’s not where the future or the growth is. If you allow yourself to just be a category for old people who are passing through the system, you’re missing a huge potential market that is incredibly incremental to what [is already on the shelf].