Fleury Group creates brand to attract class C
Folha de S. Paulo
The Fleury Group, laboratory specialized in diagnostic medicine, will launch at the end of this month the a+ (exactly this way, in lowercase), focused on classes B and C. The new brand will be present in six States: São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Bahia, Paraná, Pernambuco and Rio Grande do Sul. The a + arises from the merger of 13 laboratories, acquired by the group in the past nine years, under the same name. The brands Fleury, Weinmann (Porto Alegre) and Campana (São Paulo city) will not be integrated.
The brands that will integrate the a+ are: Biesp, Criesp, Lego, URP (SP), Qualitech (BA), Champagnat (PR), Paulo Loureiro (PE), Centro de Mastologia, Daflon, Helion Póvoa and Maiolino (RJ) and Faillace (RS). "The proposal of the new brand is to be competitive for the B/C group", said Omar Hauache, President of the group. He expects such share, which currently represents 30% of the income of the group, makes Fleury grow at two-digit rates a year, as it has been happening in recent years. In 2010, the company had gross income of R$ 934.5 million (US$ 531 million), 13.9% more than that registered in 2009. The expectation is that the company proceeds to growth of 15% this year.
Creating the brand a+ - which includes training of staff and modifications in the laboratories that currently operate under other brands - consumed nearly R$ 20 million (US$ 12.5 million), says Hauache. According to Rendrik Franco, Strategy and Marketing Officer of the Fleury Group, the new brand will have strong presence in the social media. Nonetheless, he says, the product will not be intended for the young people. The goal is to achieve all age brackets - the elderly spend more on health than youngsters -, thus mass TV commercials are also planned for the second half to try to achieve the consumer of classes B/C. The laboratories unified under the brand a+ will also offer services of collection of health products - such as leftovers of medicines and expired medicines, movies of image exams etc.- to its clients.
Hauache expects to wrap up this month the purchase of Labs D'Or - diagnostic medicine lab with more than 40 units in Rio de Janeiro. The acquisition intent was announced at the end of 2010.
According to the President of Fleury, the acquisition of Labs D'Or may increase by 40% of earnings of the group. Fleury currently has more than 140 units, 94 of them will be operating under the brand a+. The group estimates it has 8% of the national market of diagnostic medicine. Since 2002, 25 brands were acquired by Fleury, and part of them had already been absorbed by other brands of the group.