Unity Pharmacy Brand Guidelines: NTUC’s 1992 Clementi Pharmacy, Now Part of FairPrice Group

A labour-movement co-operative and a shop inside a supermarket.

Unity is the pharmacy chain of Singapore’s labour movement, and it began as a co-operative of its own. In a speech at the opening of the chain’s 50th outlet on 28 February 2013, the chairman of NTUC Enterprise said that NTUC Healthcare was set up by the labour movement in 1992, when workers were worried about rising healthcare costs, as a new co-operative meant to bring down the prices of medical and other healthcare products. He compared it with the role NTUC FairPrice had played on grocery prices in the 1970s.

Its first pharmacy, named NTUC Unity, opened in October 1992 inside the FairPrice supermarket at Clementi, in western Singapore, the same speech says. The link with the supermarkets was there from the start. NTUC FairPrice, itself a labour-movement co-operative, traces its roots to the Welcome consumer co-operative, whose first supermarket was opened in Toa Payoh in July 1973, according to English Wikipedia.

The 2013 speech marked the opening of its 50th outlet, by which time the co-operative was known as NTUC Unity Healthcare, as the speech’s title shows. It also described a “Mr Value” basket of about 100 everyday products sold at low prices. The speech added that Unity worked with the Agency for Integrated Care to give a regular discount to members of the Community Health Assist Scheme, more than 220,000 people at the time.

From NTUC Health to FairPrice Group.

By 2017 Unity was a division of NTUC Health Co-operative, itself part of NTUC Enterprise, according to NTUC Health’s audited accounts for that year. In 2017 the pharmacy chain changed hands within the labour movement’s group of businesses. NTUC Health told its members that it proposed to sell the Unity Pharmacy business and brand name, together with its 80 per cent holding in Origins Healthcare, a distributor of natural foods and of skin and hair care products that began in 1993 and in which NTUC Health had held its stake since 1995, to NTUC FairPrice, and it sought their approval at its annual general meeting on 31 May 2017. At that point, the same document said, Unity had some 60 stores across the island.

NTUC Health’s audited 2017 accounts record that on 23 June 2017, “as part of corporate reorganisation,” it signed a sale agreement with NTUC FairPrice Co-operative for the Unity division and for Origins Healthcare, and that Origins was transferred on 30 June 2017; the Unity business appears in those accounts as a discontinued operation sold during the year. FairPrice’s annual and sustainability report for 2017 said it had “integrated Unity Pharmacies” into its portfolio of store formats.

Since then Unity has been one of several FairPrice Group formats, beside the FairPrice supermarkets, FairPrice Finest and FairPrice Xtra stores and the Cheers convenience shops, which English Wikipedia dates to 1998. Vulcan Post reported in June 2025 that Trust Bank, the digital bank FairPrice launched with Standard Chartered in 2022, offers rewards across FairPrice supermarkets, Kopitiam food courts, Cheers stores and Unity pharmacies, all tied to the group’s Linkpoints loyalty scheme. The same report counted about 2.4 million Link Rewards members and close to 1.7 million users of the FairPrice app, which links the group’s formats, Unity among them, through one loyalty account.

Design and documentation.

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.

A pharmacy inside a grocery group.

In 2019 the chain gained a showcase outlet. When FairPrice opened its largest store, a FairPrice Xtra in the VivoCity mall, Inside Retail Asia reported on 22 July 2019 that “FairPrice’s health and beauty brand Unity” operated there as a standalone store, stocked with a range of skin care brands, a health-food section and an in-store pharmacist. Coconuts Singapore described the Unity outlet there as including a beauty studio with virtual make-up tools, in a unit that had previously been occupied by Giant. Inside Retail Asia put the whole space at about 9,000 square metres over two levels, designed to draw younger shoppers, and Coconuts Singapore noted that the store used Peranakan motifs in its design to set it apart from other branches.

FairPrice Group now says Unity serves customers at over 90 outlets across Singapore, as of November 2026, with ranges of skin care, hair care and oral care, pharmacists in its stores, an online “Ask Our Pharmacists” service, and video consultations with doctors at selected outlets. English Wikipedia notes that Unity shops usually sit next to FairPrice supermarkets.

The name has been simplified over time. The 1992 outlet carried the name NTUC Unity, and the 2013 speech still used it; FairPrice Group’s own pages now use “Unity” and “Unity Pharmacy.” The outlet count, as published at each stage, runs from one in 1992 to 50 in February 2013, some 60 in 2017 and over 90 in 2026.

For a design guide, Unity Pharmacy shows how a co-operative pharmacy can live inside a grocery group’s family of store names while keeping a name of its own. Compare Guardian, another health-and-beauty chain on Singapore’s high streets, and Watsons, the chain that grew from a Hong Kong dispensary. For this guide we use a deep teal, a coral and a warm white with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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