Overview
Apotea is Sweden's leading online pharmacy by market share and one of the most popular e-commerce sites in the country. At apotea.se it sells prescription and over-the-counter medicines alongside a wide range of health, beauty, personal care, baby and pet products, and it also operates in Norway. For a brand in health, beauty or wellness, Apotea is one of the most important retail channels in Sweden.
Who is behind Apotea
Apotea was founded by Pär Svärdson, who earlier founded the online bookstore Adlibris, and launched in its current form in 2012. The company has been listed on Nasdaq Stockholm since December 2024. In 2025 its net sales were around SEK 7.2 billion, up 10.1% on 2024, and it serves more than three million active customers. In 2024 Apotea had about 44% of the Swedish online pharmacy market. Since 2022 the group has also operated in Norway through its subsidiary Apotera.
Swedish shoppers rate Apotea highly. In the E-barometern customer survey for 2025, Apotea was voted consumers' favourite e-commerce company for the eighth year in a row, and Svensk Handel named it E-commerce Company of the Year 2025.
What the shopper sees
Apotea's selling points are the widest range on the market, low prices and fast delivery. The range runs to more than 52,000 items, including well-known skincare brands, vitamins and supplements, and thousands of organic and vegan products. Orders ship from Apotea's own logistics centres in Morgongåva and in Varberg, which opened in 2025, and Apotea delivers with a fully electrified delivery chain to Sweden's three largest cities.
How brands can sell through Apotea
Apotea is a retailer, not a marketplace. It buys products from suppliers, stores them in its own logistics centre and sells them on apotea.se. Brands apply through a supplier form, available in Swedish and English, and because Apotea has no fixed range review window, it takes new products into the assortment on an ongoing basis.
Every new product goes through Apotea's quality review:
- Apotea checks whether the product fits the assortment.
- The supplier is reviewed against Apotea's code of conduct, which all suppliers sign.
- Apotea's quality team reviews the product information: regulatory compliance, ingredients, labelling and product claims, and Apotea's own extra health and environmental requirements.
- An agreement is signed with the supplier.
- The product is delivered to the logistics centre and published on the website.
Apotea's own requirements go further than the law in some areas. It accepts no products containing PFAS, no allergenic fragrances in products aimed at children, and no cyclic silicones among the first three ingredients in products that can be inhaled or applied to the body. A brand considering Apotea should be ready with:
- Complete product information, including full ingredient lists and documentation that supports every claim.
- Products that meet Apotea's ingredient rules on top of EU and Swedish regulation.
- Swedish-language labelling and product content for the Swedish market.
- Reliable supply to Apotea's logistics centre, since Apotea holds the stock and sells it on.
Why Apotea matters for brands
Swedish shoppers trust Apotea, and a large share of them buy pharmacy and health products online. A brand on Apotea sits next to established pharmacy and skincare brands, in front of more than three million active customers. The quality review is strict, which also means a listing on Apotea signals that the product has passed it.
How eBrands looks at Apotea
eBrands works with brands on marketplaces and retail channels across Europe and North America, and with our home base in Helsinki we follow Nordic channels like Apotea closely. If you are thinking about Sweden or the Nordics and want to see how Apotea could sit alongside the channels you already use, we are happy to talk it through.
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