Terry White Chemmart

Terry and Rhonda White opened their first pharmacy in Woody Point, Queensland in 1959. Their network of owned pharmacies grew steadily over the years, with the brand becoming well-known and respected in community pharmacy in South East Queensland. In 1994, they established one of the first pharmacy franchises in Australia, providing a comprehensive range of services to franchisees based on their successful retail pharmacy model.

The Terry White Chemists franchise network continued to grow over the next 11 years and, in 2015, the Group became the parent company of the Chemplus brand. This took the total number of franchised pharmacies within the Terry White Group to 225.

In August 2016, the Terry White Group announced a merger with Chemmart, which created a pharmacy chain with over 500 stores nationally and an annual turnover of A$2 billion.[1] All stores have since been rebranded under the new combined chain with a new name, logo and branding. Since the merger, Terry White Chemmart is now the largest pharmacy group in Australia.[2][3]

On 1 December 2016, Terry White Chemists came under fire, after a single franchisee (who is at liberty "stock and sell products at their discretion"[4]), displayed golliwogs underneath a sign reading “Experience a White Christmas”; presumably a pun referring both to the name Terry White Chemists and the popular phrase White Christmas.[5][6] The alarm about the golliwog dolls was raised when Toowoomba man George Helon[7] spotted the dolls placed beneath the sign[8] and posted a picture of it on Facebook[9] and Twitter.[10]

Australian Aboriginal activist, author and filmmaker Stephen Hagan described Toowoomba as the "most racist city in Australia".[11] Terry White Chemists subsequently banned the sale of such dolls from sale from any franchise nationwide, and the franchisee "unreservedly apologised" for the "regrettable error".[12]

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