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APOTEKET

Swedish pharmacy sees sex toy sales rocket

Swedish state-owned pharmacy monopoly Apoteket's sales of sex toys have far exceeded expectations.

Published: 14 August 2008 13:22 CEST
Swedish pharmacy sees sex toy sales rocket

Since they started selling sex toys in June, Apoteket have sold over a thousand dildos and clitoral vibrators a week, doubling original sales projections.

Apoteket’s shelves stock adult sex toys in 100 boutiques across the country and online.

Apoteket’s product sales head Eva Fernvall said she was very pleased with the heavy turnover and told the TT news agency that Apoteket’s webpage for sex toys is the fourth most visited page on its site.

Online interest might be good, but store sales for the sex toys have been the most active.

About three quarters of Apoteket’s sex toys changed hands over the counter. Customers are clearly buying into Apoteket’s slogan ‘Trust in Lust’.

RACISM

Pharmacy to launch plasters for darker skin

Swedish pharmacy chain Apoteket has told The Local it is hoping to offer a range of bandaids suitable for customers with darker skin tones by the end of the year as part of efforts to cut discrimination.

Published: 12 August 2015 16:10 CEST
Updated: 13 August 2015 08:04 CEST
Pharmacy to launch plasters for darker skin
An Apoteket store in Stockholm. Photo: Roger Vikström/TT
The company, which has 370 stores across Sweden said it had come up with the idea after talking to a number of Swedish anti-racism charities.
 
“We're looking at whether it's possible to have different coloured plasters but we haven't made a final decision on it yet,” Communications Director Eva Fernvall told The Local on Wednesday.
 
“It won't happen by next week but we hope to have something in place by the end of the year,” she added.
 
Apoteket faced criticism earlier this week by a Swedish blogger who runs the website Vardagsrasismen.nu (which translates as 'Everyday Racism').
 
Paula Dahlberg told public broadcaster Sveriges Radio on Monday that the pharmacy giant was contributing to racism by only offering shades of beige plasters (also called bandaids in some countries) on its shelves.
 
But Fernvall insisted that the company's decision to trial darker products was made long before the writer made the comments.
 
“The fact she said that demonstrates that there are heated discussions about immigrants and refugees right now,” she said, adding that the national chemist chain was committed to reducing discrimination.
 
She admitted that the plaster plan was “unusual” and noted that she had “never heard of anything like this in any other countries”.
 
Debates around immigration have intensified over the last 12 months in Sweden, which currently takes in more asylum seekers per capita than any other EU nation.
 
The nationalist Sweden Democrat party is the third largest in parliament after winning 12.9 percent of the vote in elections in September 2014 and is continuing to gain public support.
 
Sweden's government has said it is committed to maintaining the nation's reputation for tolerance and offering help to refugees fleeing violence in the Middle East and Africa. But it has welcomed efforts by the European Commission to encourage other European Union member states to take in a greater share of asylum seekers.