There was a time when POS materials in pharmacies and drugstores looked more like furniture than “campaign material”. No flatpacks, no crash courses in assembly for pharmacy staff, just solid, well-built displays that stayed in place for years. Today, most activations arrive folded in cardboard, designed to live for a few weeks and then quietly disappear into the recycling bin.

This is not a nostalgic rant. It is a simple observation: the material has changed, the constraints have exploded, but the way POSM is designed and planned has not always kept up. And that is exactly where Rüfenacht can keep your campaigns from ending up in the stockroom, or straight in the bin.

When POSM Was Built to Last

In the “old world” of POSM, a brand investing in pharmacies and drugstores did so with the intention of staying.

You would see:

• Wooden or metal displays, heavy but rock solid
• Structures that almost became part of the furniture
• Enamel or high-quality printed branding, meant to last years

Nobody replaced a display with every campaign wave. A permanent asset was built, aligned with the brand identity and the pharmacy environment. The display became both a sales tool and a physical anchor for the brand.

For labs, that meant fewer new POS materials, but:

• Continuous, consistent visibility
• A strong physical presence in the retail health environment
• Relationships with pharmacies and drugstores based on durability, not on the volume of kits shipped

It was not perfect, of course. Costs were high, logistics were heavy, flexibility was low. But the underlying principle was clear: if you take space in a pharmacy or drugstore, you treat it seriously.

From Furniture to Cardboard: What Changed

As launches multiplied, “must-win windows” stacked up and trade activations intensified, the model of heavy, permanent POSM hit its limits. Brands needed to:

• React faster to marketing plans
• Update visuals and claims more often
• Lower unit costs to support more campaign waves

Cardboard naturally became the standard for temporary in-store materials:

• Cheaper to produce
• Lighter to transport and handle
• Easy to print and adapt from one campaign to the next

On paper, it makes perfect sense. The problem is what happened next: the slide from “well-designed cardboard, adapted to field reality” to “cheap cardboard sent in volume”.

Common outcomes:

• POS materials that look great in 3D renders but wobble after three weeks on the floor
• Formats that are too big, too tall or poorly balanced for small Swiss pharmacies and drugstores
• Materials that deform or look tired after a short time in use

Where the old wooden display felt like part of the counter, some current units look and feel like they are just passing through. And sometimes, pharmacy teams make sure they do not stay long.

When “Cheap Cardboard” Becomes Expensive

On the budget line, cardboard looks like a saving. In reality, it can turn into a quiet cost centre.

Poorly chosen or poorly designed POS materials can easily:

• Never be assembled, because staff lack time or patience
• Be removed quickly because they block circulation or sightlines
• End up in the backroom, or in recycling, long before the campaign end date

For the lab, that means:

• Design, production and logistics costs for very little real in-store impact
• Network coverage plans that look good in Excel but nothing like reality
• Field teams spending time “rescuing” installations instead of focusing on recommendation and relationship

For pharmacies and drugstores:

• Time lost assembling flimsy or complex structures
• Visual clutter that hurts category navigation and overall image
• Additional waste to handle, even if the material is technically recyclable

And then there is the environmental dimension. Leaving plastic behind is a step, but sending large volumes of cardboard that is badly conceived, functionally or commercially, is not sustainable in any meaningful sense.

What Pharmacies and Drugstores Really Think

When you spend time in the points of sale, as Rüfenacht does every week, certain messages come up again and again:

• “We do not have space.”
• “It looks nice on the picture, but here it does not fit or hold.”
• “We do not have time to build complicated things.”

Pharmacy and drugstore teams are not anti-POSM. They appreciate materials that:

• Are simple and quick to assemble
• Respect circulation, ergonomics and the look of the store
• Bring real value: better visibility, clearer information, coherent category logic

What they reject are POSM units that are:

• Oversized relative to the floor space
• Fragile or unstable
• Disconnected from how they actually work day to day

Faced with fragile, oversized materials that complicate operations versus no POSM at all, the choice is easy for most stores.

The Rüfenacht Way: Cardboard, Yes, but Smart

The goal is not to go back to all-wood or all-metal, nor to condemn cardboard. The real issue is how POS materials are conceived, tested and deployed.

This is precisely where Rüfenacht supports Swiss and international labs.

• We look at your POSM concepts through a dual lens: marketing and field reality (pharmacies plus drugstores).
• We challenge unrealistic formats before they go into production.
• We integrate assembly time, stability, lifespan and end-of-life into the brief, not as an afterthought.
• We test prototypes in real Swiss points of sale, with real constraints, not just in a meeting room.

The role is not to convince you to spend more. It is to help you stop spending for nothing: cardboard that never gets mounted, displays that collapse, campaigns that only exist in rollout decks.

A good POSM solution today means:

• A material suited to the duration and ambition of the campaign
• A design that respects space and flow in pharmacies and drugstores
• A build that one person can realistically assemble in a short time
• Integration with your brand strategy and trade calendar, not in competition with it

Conclusion: Nostalgia Is Fine. Useful POSM Is Better.

Yes, some things were better before. Displays did not bend, logos did not peel, and anything that entered a pharmacy or drugstore was built to stay. But the context has changed: more campaigns, more budget pressure, higher expectations on sustainability.

Between “10-year furniture” and “10-day disposable POSM”, there is a smarter path: solutions designed with field reality in mind, validated with points of sale, and deployed with discipline.

That is exactly the path Rüfenacht helps its clients take.