by REERA YOO | @reeraboo
editor@charactermedia.com
While some tourists fly to Paris to visit the Louvre or the Eiffel Tower, many Korean tourists are choosing to flock to a small pharmacy in the fifth arrondissement of Paris instead, reports Quartz.
According to French magazine M, Pharmacie Monge serves about 1,000 customers from Asia each day, and most of these Asian customers hail from South Korea. Now, why are Korean tourists heading to this one pharmacy in Paris when Seoul, alone, has hundreds of cosmetics and vitamin shops? Apparently, they come for the on-the-spot tax refunds, the warm customer service and wide variety of 20,000 dietary and cosmetic products.
“Here it is seven times cheaper,” said Eun Ji, a 21-year-old college student from Seoul. “No, not really—but at least three times cheaper. Back home, there is not much of a selection.”
Pharmacie Monge was put on the map 12 years ago, thanks to a Korean journalist residing in Paris who blogged about the shop’s products and low prices. The pharmacy became so popular on the Internet that it is now featured in several Korean travel guides to Paris.
In the mid-2000s, pharmacy owner Alexander Freyburger noticed the surge of Asian customers and decided to hire multilingual speakers. Out of the shop’s 50 employees, pharmacists or sale consultants, nine speak Korean, three Cantonese or Mandarin and one speak Japanese, M magazine says.
It was a smart business move as one of the store’s employees Jessy Cornu, who is fluent in Korean and trained in cosmetology, notes that sometimes the products recommended on online tour guides did not always suit the customers’ needs. With the help of bilingual sales consultants, it’s easier for the customers to find the right products.
“In Korea, the vendors are very aggressive from a commercial point of view. Consumers are also influenced by [what they see] on the Internet and social media,” said Jessy. “At first, they are a little surprised that we do not routinely offer them the most expensive or newest product.”
According to another employee, it’s no longer surprising to sell more than 80 lipsticks to one customer or see shelves emptied in minutes. To accommodate large crowds, Freyburger expanded the store by twice its original size and extended its hours, so the store stays open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.
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Featured image by Catherine Rollot/M Magazine
