Farmacias Similares Brand Guidelines: Mexico City 1997, Dr. Simi and a Stage-Bound Plush

Generic medicines, a slogan and a doctor’s office next door.

Farmacias Similares opened in Mexico City in 1997. Yucatán Magazine dated the launch to 10 September 1997 in an August 2025 profile, and El CEO, Excélsior and the Chilean daily La Tercera all give 1997. The founder was the businessman Víctor González Torres, who as a young man had inherited a pharmaceutical laboratory from his father, La Tercera reported in July 2024. The idea was a chain selling generic medicines at low prices; El CEO gives the line the company has used since its early years as “Lo mismo, pero más barato”, roughly “the same, but cheaper”.

Next to the pharmacy counter the company added a doctor’s office. Yucatán Magazine describes Consultorios Similares, where customers can see a doctor for a small fee beside the pharmacy, and notes the yellow-and-white signs that spread across the country as the chain grew. La Tercera, citing BBC Mundo, wrote in July 2024 that the chain had 9,411 branches in Mexico and 505 in Chile, where it trades as Farmacias del Dr. Simi.

Today the business is led by the founder’s son, Víctor González Herrera, who, El CEO reported in October 2026, has steered it towards a wider spread of businesses in Mexico and abroad. The same paper said the latest public figure, from September 2025, was 10,000 branches in Mexico, and quoted him calling Guadalajara the company’s most important city after Mexico City. In a July 2026 report, El CEO referred to more than 11,000 branches in Mexico in connection with a card offer.

Dr. Simi: a costume, a plush and a stage tradition.

The chain’s face is Dr. Simi, a kindly doctor with a white moustache, a white coat and a tie. Sources differ on his origins. El CEO wrote in July 2026 that the character was born in 1997 with the chain, was designed by Daniel Burgos and was inspired by the Mexican actor Joaquín Pardavé, in particular his role as Don Susanito Peñafiel y Somellera. Excélsior dated the character to 1999 in a June 2025 article, and Yucatán Magazine wrote that he drew on the founder’s own father, a physician.

The character works in person as much as in print. Employees in a full-body Dr. Simi costume, the botarga, stand outside pharmacy doors waving at cars and passers-by, Yucatán Magazine reported, and La Tercera noted the dance moves the costume is known for. The plush version became a concert ritual. El CEO traces it to the 2021 Corona Capital festival in Mexico City, when a fan threw a Dr. Simi toy to the Norwegian singer Aurora, and Yucatán Magazine describes Katy Perry receiving a rain of the dolls at a Mexico City concert in 2022. La Tercera reported artists at Chile’s Viña del Mar festival receiving them too.

The toys now come dressed as an astronaut, a chef, a footballer or a mariachi, among other versions, and are made by hand by CINIA, a social enterprise in San Andrés Cholula, Puebla, El CEO reported; Excélsior listed mugs, T-shirts and trainers among the other products carrying the character, and credited social media, and short trend videos in particular, with carrying him to younger audiences. Comscore data cited by El CEO in August 2026 put the chain’s social media following at around 11 million across its accounts. The mascot also has company. At the opening of the first SimiPet Care veterinary office in Mexico City on 12 June 2025, the chain introduced Dra. Lares, a grey-haired vet in a white coat, as the face of its pet business, with her own plush showing a small dog with a bandaged paw, Excélsior reported, adding that Dr. Simi remains the main image of the brand.

Design and documentation.

Mexican supermarket, pharmacy, discount and footwear chains tend to show their identity less through one logo than through a family of names. A grocer may run a hypermarket, a supermarket, a warehouse store and a neighbourhood shop side by side, and the format names do the sorting: a prefix or suffix such as Híper, Súper, Mercado or Express, or a diminutive for the smallest stores, tells shoppers what size of shop to expect before they walk in.

Promotions and own programmes carry weight too. Seasonal campaigns with their own names, loyalty cards and printed or online flyers appear on the companies’ own pages as part of how the stores present themselves, and some promotion names have outlived the chains that created them, moving with the stores when they changed hands. Mascots, catalogues and house ranges play a similar role for pharmacy and footwear sellers, and a guide can describe them only as the companies publish them.

Ownership is usually stated plainly. Several of these groups began as family shops in a single city and still describe their founders, holding companies and stock-exchange listings on corporate pages; takeovers between rivals recur, and a store can carry several names over its life. Regulators have a part in that story: competition reviews can decide which stores a buyer may keep.

For a designer, the useful lesson is the system rather than any single mark: how a palette, a sans and a set of format names can scale from a large hypermarket to a corner store without losing the parent name. In this guide the palette and type are an unofficial interpretation; no logo, fascia or product is reproduced.

One character across cafés, festivals and borders.

The character now carries businesses beyond the pharmacy. El CEO listed in July 2026 a music festival, SimiFest, held in 2024 and 2025; SimiPet Care clinics, mainly in Mexico City, the State of Mexico, Puebla and Aguascalientes; Café Simi, a themed café, including a branch on Avenida Insurgentes in Roma Norte; and a co-branded credit card with the fintech Stori. One café sits inside Simi Casa, a house built in 1910 and turned into a museum about the company and the character, the paper reported. Yucatán Magazine also describes SimiLandia, a small theme park in the south of Mexico City built around the mascot.

Abroad, the model changes with the market. In Chile the chain trades as Farmacias del Dr. Simi and in Colombia as Droguerías del Dr. Simi, El CEO reported in October 2026; in Japan it sells only Dr. Simi merchandise, not medicines, because of rules on foreign pharmaceutical products. Yucatán Magazine adds Guatemala, Peru and Brazil to the Latin American countries where it is present.

For a design guide, Farmacias Similares shows how a character can do the work of a logo: a costumed doctor at the door, a plush toy on concert stages and a yellow-and-white sign repeated across thousands of shops. Compare Farmacias del Ahorro, the Chiapas chain opened in 1991 and built around a capital letter A, and Farmacias Guadalajara, another Mexican pharmacy chain, owned by the Arroyo family, according to El CEO. For this guide we use a sign yellow, a tie blue and coat white with a rounded sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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