Droga Raia Brand Guidelines: An Araraquara Pharmacy of 1905, the RD Merger and a Shorter Name

One shop in the São Paulo interior.

Droga Raia began as a single pharmacy in Araraquara, a city in the interior of São Paulo state. Its present owner, RD Saúde, says the Pharmacia Raia opened on 3 August 1905. The Italian-Brazilian news site Italianismo, in a profile published in May 2021, names the founder as Giovanni Baptista Raia, known in Brazil as João, an Italian who arrived in the country in 1895 at the age of 16, trained as a pharmacist like his brother and opened the shop when he was 26. At the time, the profile notes, the pharmacist himself prepared the medicines that doctors prescribed, and the counter was where a pharmacy built its regular customers.

Growth was slow for a quarter of a century. The second pharmacy opened in 1931, in Araçatuba, according to both the company and Italianismo. From 1937 the chain spread across the São Paulo interior, and in 1951 it reached the state capital, the same profile says. In the decades that followed, perfumery was added to the medicines on the shelves. RD Saúde says the chain counted 80 pharmacies in 1992.

The family stayed in charge. Italianismo describes Antônio Carlos Pipponzi, an engineer and the founder’s grandson, as the executive who brought commercial automation to the chain in the early 1980s. In the 2000s the network opened branches outside São Paulo state, in Rio de Janeiro, Minas Gerais and Paraná, and began selling online in 2004, according to the same profile. RD Saúde describes that decade as one of modernisation, crowned by the chain’s centenary in 2005.

Raia and Drogasil become one company.

The chain’s independent life ended in 2011. On the evening of 2 August 2011, Exame reported, Drogasil and Droga Raia announced an association that would create a new company, Raia Drogasil, with more than 700 pharmacies in nine states. Drogasil’s shareholders were to hold 57% of the new company and Droga Raia’s 43%. The board would have nine seats, three for each founding group and three for independent members, and the shares would trade on the Novo Mercado, the São Paulo exchange’s segment with the strictest governance rules. Pipponzi, then Droga Raia’s president, was named chairman of the board.

Both shop names survived. The companies said at the time that each brand was well received by shoppers in different regions, Exame reported, so the signs stayed as they were. Portuguese Wikipedia dates the completed merger to November 2011 and says the combined group ended that year with 776 pharmacies. Through the merger the Raia name reached states such as Santa Catarina, Goiás and Mato Grosso do Sul, and the loyalty scheme Muito Mais Raia began, according to Italianismo.

The group then grew by purchase as well as by opening shops. In February 2019 Raia Drogasil agreed to buy Onofre, a São Paulo-focused chain then owned by the American pharmacy group CVS, Brazil Journal reported. Mercado&Consumo counted 50 Onofre units, 47 of them in São Paulo state, and noted that Onofre had been founded in Rio de Janeiro in 1934. Brazil Journal said the main attraction was Onofre’s online business, run from a single distribution centre in São Paulo’s Mooca district. Brazil’s competition authority, CADE, cleared the purchase without restrictions in May 2019, Suno reported, and Portuguese Wikipedia says the Onofre shops were folded into the Raia and Drogasil banners.

Brazil’s retail registers.

Brazilian retail brands are read most easily through their store formats. The food format at the centre of this group is the atacarejo, a word that joins atacado, wholesale, and varejo, retail. In 2009 the consultant Alberto Serrentino told Estadão that it is a Brazilian hybrid: about half the shoppers are small food businesses and half are households, entry is open without a membership card, and the range is built on basic branded goods sold in bulk. Chains such as Assaí and Atacadão present themselves through big warehouse stores, large signs and services added inside them, such as butchers, bakeries and wine sections.

Group ownership shapes these brands as much as design does. Banners are bought, converted and spun off: Assaí left GPA in 2021, Carrefour bought Atacadão in 2007, and stores from Extra, Makro and Grupo BIG have been converted to other banners. For the pharmacy, home, stationery and book chains in this set, each guide names the owner, any merger and the dates as published sources give them.

Logos and campaigns are documented unevenly. Some changes are reported in detail by marketing titles, as with Assaí’s redrawn sun of 2024, made with Troiano Branding; for many banners the official colours and typefaces are not published at all, so the palettes in these guides are our own interpretations. Own-label ranges, loyalty programmes and apps appear here only as the companies or the press describe them.

Corporate pages fill in the rest: founders, owners, stock-market listings and delistings, and, for at least one bookseller in this set, judicial recovery, the Brazilian court-supervised restructuring process. These guides state such events plainly, with their dates, and say when a chain closed or changed hands rather than implying that it still trades as before.

Dropping “Droga”.

In June 2022 the chain began changing its own name. Droga Raia would take “Droga” out of the banner, Mercado&Consumo reported on 13 June 2022, following a path already taken by Porto Seguro, now Porto, and Ponto Frio, now Ponto. A pilot shop under the new identity opened in Jardim Paulista, São Paulo, with a second São Paulo unit being refitted and no date set for the roughly 1,100 other pharmacies; for the time being, the new look could also be seen in the chain’s mobile apps and online shop. RD’s president told the magazine that Raia was already what customers called the chain, and that the change was only an update.

The parent company changed its name twice. In 2017 Raia Drogasil adopted the corporate brand RD, English and Portuguese Wikipedia say. On 18 March 2024 it announced the corporate brand RD Saúde, effective that month, Mercado&Consumo reported. The magazine said three agencies took part: Box 1824 on strategy, Tátil Design on the visual and verbal identity, and Suno on the launch campaign. Tátil’s creative director told it that the cross associated with pharmacies had been redrawn as a star carrying a “pulse,” which moves in digital uses.

As of September 2026, RD Saúde ran 3,770 pharmacies in 697 cities under the Raia and Drogasil names, Eu Quero Investir reported in November 2026. In June 2025 Mercado&Consumo reported that Raia and Drogasil shops had offered vaccination since 2017, and that more than 2,500 of the group’s 3,300 pharmacies then had rooms set aside for consultations on simple cases. The exclusive ranges RD Saúde sells through both chains include Needs, bwell, Natz and Nutrigood, the company says.

For a design guide, Droga Raia shows how a pharmacy name more than a century old can be shortened to the word its customers already used, while the family name stays on the sign. Compare Drogasil, its partner in the 2011 merger, and Pague Menos, another Brazilian pharmacy chain. For this guide we use a deep green, sage and pale mint with a rounded sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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