Apotheka: one platform for five pharmacy and beauty stores in three countries

01.11.2021

Magnum needed one platform for its pharmacy, beauty and pet product stores in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania that meets the requirements of regulated pharmacy retail. We built a solution with a Magento 2 backend and a React frontend that runs apotheka.ee, apotheka.lv, apotheka.lt, apothekabeauty.ee and hills.ee.

5
online stores on one platform
3
countries: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania
3
brands: Apotheka, Apotheka Beauty, Hills

The challenge

Pharmacy retail is one of the most strictly regulated areas of e-commerce. Prescription medicines require secure identity verification, and purchase data may include special categories of health data.

Magnum operates in three countries with different identification, payment and legal requirements. On top of that, one solution had to serve several brands without each store becoming a separate development project.

What we did

We built one Magento 2 backend that serves all five stores, and a separate React frontend that talks to the backend via GraphQL. Opus is Magnum's long-term technical partner, developing, managing and securing the platform day to day.

A multi-market, multi-brand platform. Three countries and three brands on one codebase, each market with its own language, identity verification and payment methods.
A prescription medicines solution. We modernised the prescription medicines application, passed security audits and rolled the solution out to the Latvian market as well.
Secure identity verification. Country-specific e-identity solutions in every market, so buying prescription medicines is legal and secure.
Data protection and security. Anonymisation of special categories of health data in analytics, a web application firewall and continuous security monitoring.
Technical SEO. Structured data, canonical URLs and indexing control for large product catalogues.
A regular release cycle. New versions go live several times a month, each tested in a staging environment and documented.

The result

Five stores in three countries run on one platform, so every new feature reaches all markets as a single development.

Legal and secure prescription sales in all three markets.
Lower development cost per market, because the backend, frontend and processes are shared.
Data protection built in, with special categories of data anonymised in analytics.
New releases several times a month, each tested and documented.

Platform

Magento Open Source

Magento is one of the world's leading e-commerce platforms. It scales with your sales and suits stores with large product ranges.

Technologies

React

React is the world's most widely used library for user interfaces, behind fast web apps, portals and self-service environments.

Node.js

Node.js is server-side JavaScript we use to build fast backends, APIs, integrations and applications that scale well.

PHP

PHP is a widely used open-source language we use to build dynamic web applications, intranets and Magento online stores.

Completed projects

We have extensive experience in developing IT software and e-commerce solutions for businesses, spanning from the financial sector to insurance and pharmaceutical industries. We serve as a long-term partner for both large corporations and rapidly growing startups.