Our strategy is to acquire and build excellent brands backed by science and engaging consumers through omnichannel
Karo owns and commercialises a portfolio of attractive consumer healthcare brands in four primary categories that each have attractive fundamentals and outlook. We focus exclusively on two questions: How to develop our brands to enable profitable growth and how to find new and better ways to connect them commercially to consumers. Our objective is to build competitive advantage and commercial differentiation on a brand level, ultimately leading more consumers to choose Karo’s brands ahead of competition. We have a clear model for how to grow our brands, leveraging in-housed omnichannel and digital capabilities, innovation leadership and a consumer-centric approach. We are asset-light and outsource all activities related to production, warehousing and logistics.
Purpose & Vision
Guided by Our Purpose and Vision
Karo’s purpose is to provide smart choices in everyday healthcare by combining our ethical drug development heritage* with a strong focus on scientifically proven, effective products. Our brands and products address real consumer needs with the consumer focus and marketing toolbox from fast-moving consumer goods. We engage with healthcare professionals, pharmacy staff, and consumers to raise awareness and enable them to manage their daily healthcare needs proactively.
Our vision is to become a EUR 1bn company and hence to almost double our current size. We will reach this target via a combination of organic growth and strategic M&A.
*Karo originates from Karo Bio, a biotech company linked to the Karolinska Institute and Karolinska University Hospital, one of Europe’s leading hospitals.
Where We Play
Expanding Our Geographical Reach
From its strong Nordic core, Karo operates directly primarily in the European markets. We have expanded our footprint and have sales organisations in 12 European markets. We drive local markets with local employees who understand the specifics of each of our markets.
Our commercial aspirations are three-fold: First, to further fortify our Nordic home markets. We have clear ambitions to become the #1 consumer healthcare player in the Nordics. Second, to scale our business in the EU5 markets by adding more brands to our existing platform to strengthen our position with pharmacies and healthcare professionals. Third, to explore opportunities in Asia and the US where we have built an initial presence that can be scaled over time.
Focus on Key Categories
We focus on key categories within everyday healthcare, which are large and attractive from a commercial and competitive perspective:
We serve specific need states and sub-categories within these large and attractive categories, focusing on themes that are attractive and underserved, which fit our brands’ equity and can be addressed and exploited with Karo’s commercial capabilities.
How We Win
Consumer Insights at the Core
The better we understand our consumers – from when they start researching a health problem and weighing up available options to when they decide which option to buy – the better we can respond with advice and relevant product solutions. We must differentiate Karo by being close to our consumers and their path to purchase, and by rapidly adjusting our content and brands to suit emerging consumer needs and keeping our brands relevant.
Valorising Brands with Innovation
As consumer healthcare continues to grow, with more and more consumers looking to self-care and take charge of their own health, we’re constantly evaluating our product portfolio. We strive to serve existing, under-met, and emerging consumer needs, better than our competitors and innovation is a critical strategy to help us deliver this. Our New Product Developments bring to market innovative new smart solutions, which help consumers quickly and effectively solve those irritating skin, foot, intimate or digestive issues; or to manage the triggers, to prevent them from reoccurring.
Our NPD is based on proprietary consumer data insights and is designed to help consumers to take action, and treat, rather than ignore the problem, or use more regularly to manage an ongoing condition, or their overall wellbeing. Our formulations include clinically proven OTCs and Medical Devices, Cosmetics and Food supplements – all scientifically backed, with quality data packages. This enables us to clearly explain to the consumer and expert their features and benefits through strong, compelling claims.
It’s also important to keep our hero products relevant and up to date, and we have an ongoing programme of renovation or Existing Product Development, where we upgrade our formulations, and their presentation, and perform new clinical studies to validate new, added value consumer benefits. Bringing our existing products to new consumers in new geographies is also a key area of focus, and we seek global launches, launched with local nuance, to maximise our innovation investments.
We ideate and innovate cross-brand and cross-category, to maximise synergy and scale. Sustainability is
designed-into each new innovation, to ensure we are consistently improving our sustainability footprint with every new launch.
Digital-First Strategy to Address Undertreatment
Most of our largest brands solve problems that are often associated with stigma and embarrassment. For example, eczema, hemorrhoids and vaginal health. We know that the stigma often impacts consumers’ propensity to ask healthcare professionals for advice and seek treatment. We also know that the problems are often invalidating and reduce consumers’ quality of life, yet the conditions remain undertreated. We see great opportunities in combining our deep capabilities in digital commerce with these categories and make it our focus to reach consumers online as they search for solutions, to educate them and to point them in the direction of an effective treatment that is often very inexpensive compared to the size of the problem it solves.
Omnichannel Player with Hands-On Commercial Approach
We must be present with our brands and products wherever and whenever people need us and attract consumers with the right content and creativity, customised to the specific channel at hand. As consumers rapidly grow more confident about making smart online choices for their everyday healthcare, our job is to make sure our brands and information are easy to find and that we can transact with consumers regardless of their preferred purchasing channel. That is why building our digital expertise and true omnichannel capabilities are major priorities.
We have in-house capabilities in digital content production, design, and artwork and have our own teams to execute and manage our Amazon and direct-to-consumer businesses both for account management and performance marketing.
Our products can be found in traditional pharmacies, physical retail stores, and on e-commerce platforms. The
e-commerce platforms constitute approximately 30% of Karo’s revenues and include e-pharmacies, third-party platforms, such as Amazon and – in some cases – Karo’s own branded web shops.
How We Work
Scalable, Digitised and Lean Business Operations
Karo has invested heavily in digitisation of core processes and systems over recent years. This enables us to handle increasing levels of complexity as we grow without expanding our organisation and administration costs, to automate daily workflows, and to organise, extract and analyse data to help us optimise and automate flows. We can also add predictive tools and AI to improve the quality and speed of insights and decisions once we have high-quality master data in place. The Karo scalable platform enables us to operate the business in a much leaner and less people-intensive manner compared to many competitors.
Mastering M&A for Growth
Karo has executed a string of acquisitions that have supported our growth and geographical expansion and added capabilities across core functions and key processes. We aim to pursue additional M&A, particularly bolt-on brand and portfolio acquisitions, and exploit the track record and institutionalised capability platform Karo has built to access and synergistically integrate acquisitions.
