How Dr Max Got One-Click Catalogs and Boosted Their Marketing Performance

About Dr Max

Dr Max is a pharmacy chain with a broad assortment of products including prescription medications, supplements, and personal care products. Communication around products in this industry is sensitive, which means promotional materials must be created responsibly and accurately.

Catalogs are an important promotional channel for Dr Max. They communicate discounts and promotions, but ideally they also serve as a tool to educate customers.

Dr Max publishes two monthly catalogs (for the Dr Max and Super Dr Max pharmacy formats), each featuring around 400 SKUs. Many of these products are grouped into bundles or product sets.

At the same time the project started, the company also introduced a new group-level brand book and template, which the local chain needed to adopt.

The Main Problem

Before the project began, catalog production at Dr Max relied entirely on one in-house designer responsible for:

• Building the catalog from an Excel table
  
• Finding missing product photos
  
• Improving low-quality images
  
• Creating product bundles
  
• Managing frequent updates and last-minute changes
  
• Delivering the final PDF for print and digital distribution
  

This process created significant operational pressure.

Beyond the operational challenges, the catalog also had limited sales impact.

As seen in the old version, products were presented with only a name, price, and image. There was no capacity to properly explain pharmaceutical products, provide educational context, or guide customers toward better purchasing decisions.

Our Solution

The original goal of the project was to analyze the existing catalog offer and implement a system that could improve sales performance.

But once we entered the real workflow, it became clear that sales impact could not improve while the catalog process remained error-prone and designer-dependent.

Automating catalog production became a necessary first step.

Within the Dr Max environment, our system now:

• Uses sales data and previous promotions to propose catalog structure and product grouping
  
• Suggests catalog layouts using AI
  
• Automatically generates the catalog without design software by integrating product databases, images, and descriptions
  
• Creates richer product descriptions that do not rely solely on distributor copy — something that was previously impossible to do manually at scale
  

How the System Works Today

The marketing team now has full control over the content and structure of the catalog.

The system automatically composes pages using the group-approved template, while pulling product images and improving their quality when necessary.

At the same time, product communication has been redesigned for a B2C context.

We introduced a rule that:

• Product names are simplified
  
• Each product includes 3–5 bullet points explaining what the product helps with and its long-term benefits
  
• One bullet point acts as a clear call-to-action for the customer
  

This creates a much clearer and more persuasive catalog.

Implementation Process

To implement the system, Dr Max provided:

• Access to the product database
  
• Access to the image database
  
• The group brand template and guidelines
  

Once connected to the product and image databases, we integrated the template to ensure the catalog output always remains brand-consistent.

We also implemented AI functions to:

• Standardize product names and descriptions so they are understandable to customers without pharmaceutical expertise
  
• Improve product images by increasing quality and removing backgrounds so they work across different catalog layouts
  

Challenges and How We Solved Them

Low-quality images
→ Automated image processing and preparation

Distributor-style descriptions
→ AI rewriting of all product descriptions at scale

Need for consistent output
→ Templates, rules, and quality checkpoints

Operational Results

The catalog is now produced in one day, compared to the previous 7–12 days per catalog cycle.

This brought several operational benefits:

• A more stable process with fewer last-minute emergencies
  
• Less overtime for the design team
  
• ~50 hours of internal time saved per catalog cycle
  

At the same time, the catalog itself became visually stronger and the design team is now free to focus on brand-building work instead of production tasks.

Sales Results (ROI)

Success was measured across two categories: operational efficiency and sales performance.

• Catalog production: 7–12 days → 1 day
  
• ~50 hours saved per cycle
  
• More stable production workflow
  

Since the project originally started with the goal of improving sales, we also implemented an AI algorithm that analyzes past sales and recommends optimal product placement within the catalog.

During summer 2025, we ran an A/B test across 15 comparable pharmacies (99.1% identical in transaction volume, store size, and revenue).

Some locations received the old catalog, while others received the new optimized version, allowing us to compare performance.

In both test months, the catalog using our optimized product layout generated higher sales than the previous version.

Combined with operational savings and the increased flexibility for the marketing team, the project delivered significant value for Dr Max.

Broader Implications

In industries like pharmaceuticals, catalogs are not just promotional materials — they are also an opportunity to:

• educate customers
  
• build trust
  
• strengthen the brand
  

For that reason, catalogs in this sector must be informative, precise, and consistent.

This makes catalog strategy a serious marketing effort — which means it makes little sense for teams to spend most of their time on manual production work.

Once production is automated, marketing teams gain what they actually need: the time and space to improve messaging and relevance instead of simply surviving the production process every month.