Bipa Brand Guidelines: Karl Wlaschek’s 1980 Vienna Drugstore Chain and Its Big B

A Billa sister chain from Vienna.

Bipa — written in capitals, BIPA, by the company itself — is an Austrian drugstore chain with its seat in Wiener Neudorf, just south of Vienna. Its operating company is BIPA Parfumerien Gesellschaft m.b.H., and both the company and German Wikipedia give its founding year as 1980; German Wikipedia cites a 2005 anniversary report in the Vorarlberger Nachrichten for the date.

The chain was founded by Karl Wlaschek as a sister company of Billa, the grocery chain he had built, German Wikipedia says. Wlaschek had opened his own first drugstore in 1953 and later widened the range to food; Billa, a name taken from “billiger Laden,” or cheaper shop, grew into a flourishing retailer in the 1960s and 1970s. To spread the business and keep competitors at a distance, he then set up the drugstore chain, whose name follows the same pattern: German Wikipedia expands Bipa as “billige Parfümerien,” cheaper perfumeries. With Billa, Merkur, Libro and other trading firms it belonged to the so-called BML holding.

The first Bipa opened on Goldschmiedgasse in Vienna’s first district, the old city centre, and stocked products from across the drugstore and perfumery range. In 1988 the chain moved into services for the first time with the launch of its photo shops, German Wikipedia says. REWE International, Bipa’s parent today, describes it in its own history as the company’s own perfume chain, founded in 1980 during the years in which the supermarket business grew into a corporate group.

From Wlaschek’s group to the REWE Group.

By the middle of the 1990s, according to German Wikipedia, Bipa, dm and Schlecker together held three-quarters of the Austrian drugstore market. In 1996 Wlaschek sold large parts of his business to the German REWE Group; Bipa went with the Billa, Emma, Merkur and Mondo shops. German Wikipedia cites reports on the sale published in July 1996 by the Handelsblatt and the Bonner General-Anzeiger, and REWE International’s own history gives the same year.

Under REWE the network kept growing. In 1997 Bipa began opening 100 more branches and brought its first own brands into the shops; around the turn of the millennium it built up online selling alongside Billa; in 1999 it had more locations than dm for the first time, and in 2004 it passed 500 branches. To mark that, it opened a flagship store of more than 400 square metres in Vienna’s Ringstraßen-Galerien shopping centre, with a wider range, as a model for other shops; services tried there, such as dry cleaning, were later taken up in many other branches, German Wikipedia says.

Abroad, Bipa expanded into Italy from 2004, tested Germany, and started in Croatia in 2007, the same year as a broad modernisation of how its stores were laid out and how they looked. In 2016 it reworked its range, cutting back the perfumery and giving more room to food, cosmetics and care products. A further relaunch of the stores and the advertising followed in 2017; since then, German Wikipedia says, citing Der Standard, softer colours, natural materials and warm light have been used more widely in Bipa shops.

REWE International AG, wholly owned by the German REWE Group and based in Wiener Neudorf, now lists BIPA in Croatia and Romania as well as Austria. German Wikipedia says a new unit, Bipa International, was set up in 2025 as the chain expanded further, including into Romania.

How drugstore chains present themselves.

The guides in this group cover drugstore and pharmacy chains in Europe, Asia and the Americas. Their public face is mostly built from the same parts: a name over the door, a logo on store signs and shopping bags, and own-label beauty and household ranges named as the companies name them. The Austrian chain Bipa, for example, lists own labels such as BI CARE, BI HOME and LOOK BY BIPA on its company page.

Store formats differ more than the signs suggest. Some chains run compact neighbourhood shops; others mix several trades under one roof. German Wikipedia lists the departments of Müller, the Ulm-based chain, as running from drugstore and perfumery to toys, stationery, books and media. Store networks are published by the companies themselves or counted in dated press reports, so every number in these guides carries its year and its source.

Ownership is often less visible than the brand. Many chains sit inside larger retail groups: Bipa has belonged to the German REWE Group since 1996, and REWE International now lists it in Austria, Croatia and Romania. Others are still run by the company of the person who founded them, as German Wikipedia records for Müller. Corporate pages on founders, owners and retail groups are the starting point for these structures, and they are read here alongside encyclopaedias, registers and the trade press.

Identities change too. In January 2026 the Austrian trade site Leadersnet reported a new corporate design for Bipa, developed by BBDO Wien and built around a single capital B. Each guide sets out what can be checked about a chain — its founder, its owner, its network and its look — and marks clearly what rests only on the company’s own word.

Everything around one capital letter.

The company says it runs around 600 branches with more than 4,000 staff and over 15,000 articles, figures German Wikipedia also gives, citing the company in 2017. Its own labels, as the company names them, include BI CARE, BI HOME, BABYWELL and LOOK BY BIPA; REWE International dates LOOK BY BIPA to the 1990s, when the group launched several private labels. Bipa also offers a customer card, an online shop with home delivery or collection in a branch, and in 2013 it introduced payment by mobile phone, German Wikipedia says.

The current look is recent. In March 2025 the Austrian business site Leadersnet reported that the Vienna office of the agency BBDO had won a multi-stage pitch to give Bipa a modern corporate design, for its home market and for the brand’s presence abroad. The result was presented in January 2026. Leadersnet reported that the new identity, developed by BBDO Wien, centres on the letter B, used as a flexible key visual that frames photography, typography and short messages, online and at the point of sale, with a campaign by the lead agency AANDRS running under the line “Alles beginnt mit einem großen B,” or everything starts with a big B. Store entrances, signs for finding the way around the shop and promotional areas were reworked, with a reduced visual language and more considered lighting, the report said. On its own company page Bipa now describes the big B as the design element customers will meet throughout its world, framing pictures, texts and clear messages online and in the branches.

For a design guide, Bipa shows how a single initial can carry a whole retail identity, from shop entrances to the online shop. Compare dm-drogerie markt, which German Wikipedia names among Bipa’s competitors in Austria, and Müller, another drugstore chain with branches in Austria. For this guide we use a deep magenta, berry ink and blush with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Bipa’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.