All pharmacy owners are entrepreneurs but few of them ever scale a business like Derryman Laurence O’Kane, writes Colm Heatley

Laurence O’Kane isn’t the type of entrepreneur normally favoured by the judging panel for the EY Entrepreneur of the Year awards. His business is retail focused and largely trades in Ireland. He has no ambition to conquer global markets and he’s never had to resort to venture capital. Yet as an example of a businessman making the most of the hands across the border opportunity, EY recognition for O’Kane would be very timely.

The Derryman (pictured), one of eight finalists in the Industry category in this year’s EY awards, is also the essence of what entrepreneurship should be all about: building something from nothing, seizing opportunities as they present themselves, and giving back to the local community when wealth accrues.

The Laurence O’Kane story isn’t exactly rags to riches, but there was no silver spoon when he started out. The youngest of ten children, O’Kane grew up in a rural house without electricity and no inside toilet. His mother, who died when he was young, had instilled the value of education in her children, and most of O’Kane’s siblings became teachers or nurses. A sister was his teacher in primary school and when O’Kane studied A-Level chemistry the school teacher was his brother. “I suppose it was unusual, but it was fine,’’ O’Kane remarks.

In the 1970s, access to university education in Northern Ireland was more egalitarian that it is today. O’Kane (58) graduated from Queen’s University in the early 1980s with a degree in pharmacy and he opened his first pharmacy in his native Draperstown, with a loan from his brother. The self-employed businessman was on his way.

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O’Kane says he enjoyed the interaction with the local community and helping people. “Being able to reassure young mothers that their baby was alright and offering advice was a really good feeling. I really enjoyed working in the pharmacy,’’ he recalls.

Pivot Beyond Retail

So far so not very unusual. Hundreds of pharmacy grads set up their own shops and, like O’Kane, many add additional outlets. However, in the 1990s O’Kane pivoted sideways into distribution of OTC products for pharmacies, a business that now has annual turnover of €16m, made a net profit of €1.2m in 2017/18 and paid O’Kane and his wife Maura €370,000 in dividends.

“I always look for opportunities,” says O’Kane. “The Pharmacy Supplies business came about when a sales rep who sold us perfumes and some other good told me he wanted to sell up. I bought the agency and kept him on as a main salesperson. He had a terrific network of clients on the west coast of Ireland, and we concentrated there to begin with. At the start we just about broke even, but there was clearly potential.’”

Pharmacy Supplies now has 60 staff and distributes products such as nappies, wipes, scents and make-up. The sales network covers all of Ireland and the company is active in Scotland too. In O’Kane’s telling, the toughest market to crack was the deep south. “In Munster you really have to earn their trust,” he says.

O’Kane’s largest enterprise is Imed Health Care, a parallel importer of medicines from the North into the South. Generic medicines are imported from Europe and the UK mainland to Draperstown, where they are repackaged and relabelled and sent down south. The venture, established in 2007, is the jewel in the O’Kane crown, though he doesn’t take all the credit.

The 50% partner in Imed is Paul Murphy, who had a senior role with AstraZeneca in Ireland before approaching O’Kane with the parallel import idea. The main barrier to entry is regulatory red tape: Imed must hold licenses for the medicines it supplies and relabel them with instructions for use as per the Irish regulator.

Imed currently holds licenses for c.400 pharmaceutical imports into the South and also targets the UK mainland in the same way. Some operations may move to Dublin from Draperstown as a result of the UK’s decision to leave the EU.

Imed has two operating companies. In the North, Imed (NI) Ltd’s annual sales doubled between 2014 and 2018 to €41m, and net profit in the latest filed accounts was €770,000. In the Republic, Imed Health Care Ltd had turnover of €28m in 2017/18 and booked a net profit of €310,000. The two companies trade with each other, but even allowing for that Imed is clearly a substantial business.

B-Bold Tanning

And that’s not all. In 2017 Laurence O’Kane set up Mediteq Healthcare Solutions, a hospital cleaning company. Beauty has been on his agenda since 2012, when a local woman in Draperstown came to O’Kane with an idea for a self-tanning product.

He ran with it and the B-Bold range now spans lotions and mousses as well as applicator gloves and moisturisers. O’Kane says there are plans to roll-out three new B-Bold products this year, with another four in 2020. “It’s always about looking for new opportunities and seeing how things can be improved,” O’Kane explains.

For O’Kane, whose house in Draperstown is just a few minutes’ walk from his office and not far from the family home where he grew up, it’s all about keeping things local. He’s chairman of the Workspace Group in Draperstown, established in 1985 to convert a former shirt factory into an enterprise space for startups. Surplus income form the social enterprise funds a recreation centre, after-school care for children and grants to voluntary groups.

A father-of-three, O’Kane drinks in the local bar and even ran a local pub himself for a while. Business seems all consuming for O’Kane, though he has a fondness for horse racing. He expects his nags to work hard too: Hitchens (in picture above), retired in 2014, ran 74 times and twice won the GP3 Greenlands sprint at the Curragh. The racehorse’s total prize money amounted to €770,000.

Says O’Kane: “The truth is I see the horse-racing as a bit of a business venture, even though I know that I shouldn’t. Maybe it’s the competitive streak in me, but at the same time I do unwind with it and it’s a great feeling when your horse wins a race.”

Pic: Richie Stokes