Redcare

Redcare is the own-brand (private-label) line of health and personal-care products sold by the European online-pharmacy group Redcare Pharmacy N.V., which is headquartered in Sevenum in the Netherlands [9]. The range was launched in June 2020, when the group still traded as Shop Apotheke Europe [7]. It consists mainly of food supplements and over-the-counter health products, with a smaller skincare sub-line, Redcare Derma, that covers sun cream and face care.

The brand is not an independent cosmetics house. It shares its name with the company that owns it, and its story is closely tied to the growth of that company from a single pharmacy in Cologne into a listed retailer operating webshops in seven European countries. Redcare remains an active line.

Two dates attach to the Redcare name, and they describe different things. The group's own company history gives June 2020 as the launch of "Redcare" branded health products [7], and that is the starting point of the product line. The parent business is older: according to the company, it began in 2001 in a local pharmacy in Cologne, Germany [3]. The products themselves have existed only since 2020; the 2001 date belongs to the pharmacy business behind them.

The company tells its founding as the story of a young pharmacist who decided to digitise a family pharmacy. German pharmacy trade press gives a more detailed account. It reports that Shop Apotheke was founded in June 2001 out of Cologne's Fortuna Apotheke and was sold in 2009 to Europa Apotheek Venlo (EAV), a Dutch mail-order pharmacy that had opened in March 2001 just across the German border [10]. EAV was founded by Robert Hess and Michael Köhler, both former Hoechst managers, together with Klaus Gritschneder. The company does not name individual founders for the Redcare product line, which was created inside the established group rather than by a founder.

The brand's national origin can be read two ways. Its owner is a Dutch public company with its head office in Sevenum, and the webshop that presents the line in Switzerland is run by Shop-Apotheke B.V., a Dutch limited company based at the same Sevenum address [5]. The parent business, however, started in Germany, and Cologne remains one of the group's locations. This article treats Redcare as a Dutch brand, since the line was launched in 2020, the same year the group moved its headquarters to Sevenum.

The early history of the parent business shaped what the Redcare line would later become. Shop Apotheke's website went live in January 2002, selling beauty, personal-care and food-supplement products. After a change in German law in 2004 allowed mail-order sales of non-prescription medicines, Wikipedia records that the company became one of the first online retailers in Germany to sell such products together with pharmaceutical advice.

Over the following decade the business moved across the border. In 2010 it relocated its logistics and sales operations to Venlo in the Netherlands, and in 2012 it opened an Austrian webshop. Belgian and French webshops followed in the mid-2010s. In 2016 the company went public on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange as Shop Apotheke Europe.

The group's own-brand programme grew alongside this expansion. A loyalty scheme, RedPoints, launched in January 2018, and the Redcare product range followed in June 2020. That same year the company moved its headquarters into a new building in Sevenum, and in 2021 it shifted full logistics operations to an adjacent warehouse of about 40,000 square metres.

The name of the product line later became the name of the whole company. On 13 June 2023, Shop Apotheke Europe renamed itself Redcare Pharmacy [9]. Its corporate history adds that the share ticker changed from SAE to RDC at the time and that the stock was promoted to the MDAX index. Some of the group's national webshops took the new name as well: the Swiss shop, for example, now presents itself as Redcare Apotheke, formerly Shop Apotheke [1]. Other webshops in the group, including the Austrian one, continue to trade as Shop Apotheke.

Redcare is wholly a creation of its parent company and has never been acquired. The owner, Redcare Pharmacy N.V., is a publicly listed mail-order pharmacy retailer. The company says it serves customers in Germany, Austria, France, Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands and Switzerland, and that it sells more than 250,000 products, ranging from non-prescription medicines and supplements to beauty and personal-care items.

The group took its present shape through a series of acquisitions. In 2016 it bought the Belgian online-pharmacy group Farmaline, which brought entry into Italy and the Netherlands. In 2017 it acquired Europa Apotheek, a business specialising in prescription medicines for German customers, and in 2018 it bought the Berlin-based functional-nutrition company nu3 [9]. According to the trade-press account, Europa Apotheek had itself belonged to the US group Medco from 2008 to 2013 before being sold back to its founders [10].

Redcare sits alongside three other in-house brands in the group's portfolio: Skintist, nu3 and Beavita [2]. The division of labour among them is fairly clear. Skintist is the group's dedicated skincare line, which the company describes as vegan and dermatologically tested; nu3 covers natural foods, fitness and wellness products; and Beavita focuses on diet shakes, soups and other weight-management products. Those descriptions apply to the sister brands, not to Redcare.

In Switzerland, the group's business is run as a joint venture with the Swiss healthcare group Galenica, in which the parent holds 51 per cent and Galenica 49 per cent. Regulators approved the arrangement in May 2023.

Redcare is positioned as a lower-priced in-house alternative to branded supplements and health products. The group's Swiss webshop calls it "the strong alternative" for food supplements and health products, and says its constantly growing range is matched to its customers' most pressing health needs [4]. The company sums up the brand's aim as high quality and safety at a low price.

In practice, that means a house brand covering everyday staples such as vitamins, nasal sprays and eye drops rather than specialist or prestige products. The Swiss shop's homepage puts the same idea more briefly, presenting Redcare as its own brand offering "high quality at low prices".

The wider "care" vocabulary comes from the parent. The group uses the tagline "Who cares? We do." and the vision statement "Until every human has their health" for the company as a whole, rather than for the product line specifically. The Swiss shop explains that the name Redcare is meant to signal that care is at the heart of the business, and that its compass logo stands for guidance towards a healthy life.

Most of the Redcare range sits outside beauty in the narrow sense. The group's Swiss own-brand page lists food supplements and general health products, including eye drops, iron preparations, vitamin B12, nasal spray, magnesium, calcium and vitamin D3 combinations, probiotics, treatments for nail fungus and vitamins aimed at metabolism. Named products include Redcare Eisen Forte Plus, an iron supplement, and Redcare Meerwasser Nasenspray, a seawater nasal spray.

The line is organised into several sub-ranges, each with its own focus [6]:

- Redcare Derma — sun cream and face care, the line's main skincare offer - Redcare Beauty — a collagen product - Redcare Vita — supplements such as coenzyme Q10 - Redcare Probio — probiotics, including Probio 4 + Inulin - Redcare Eye — eye drops - Redcare Junior — children's plasters and multivitamins - Redcare Men — pumpkin-based products

Some products carry their own dietary or ethical labels. Redcare Vita Omega-3 Öl Vegan is a plant-based omega-3 oil, and several Redcare supplements appear in the Swiss shop's sustainability section with labels such as "vegan" and "lactose-free". These are product-level claims: Redcare does not describe the line as a whole as vegan.

No third-party certifications, proprietary technologies, patents or clinical claims are documented for the Redcare line, and its manufacturing locations have not been published.

Redcare is an active brand. As of October 2026, the line is presented as a current own brand on the group's Swiss and Austrian webshops. Its owner, Redcare Pharmacy N.V., continues to trade as a listed company and operates webshops in seven European countries.