Drammes Apotheke

Drammes Apotheke is a European Apothecary which began in Germany and spread by buying up smaller businesses across Europe. They have had difficulty accessing the British market with their own shops owing to a strong set of family businesses and a lingering presence of The Worshipful Society of Apothecaries [1]. Instead, they supply shops with their own branded products where possible.

Reputation

Until late 2010 were seen as a larger bully in the market who could sell potions and stock to apothecaries in Britain at low prices. Then they were outed as the source of Poisons and Painkillers and were both dropped and legally pursued by St Mungo's and families of those poisoned. The battle is ongoing and Drammes has likely been boycotted in Britain.

Headquarters

Drammes has offices in Heidelberg, Germany, where it began. Its history is interwoven with the University Hospital there, which was founded in 1386 [2] and remains there today, considered the most competitive and hardest German medical school to enter into for Muggles.

Name and Brand

The term Drammes is used in the Apothecaries' System [3], a system of weights and mass units that were used by healers and apothecaries for medical recipes.

The company's logo consists of a set of scales, and the packaging and bottle labels are consistent across all their shops, though translated into local languages.

Territories

From Heidelberg the company manages its extensive trading network which buys from herbologists and other sources carefully selected for quantity and price. Staff based on the ground deal with the transport of the goods, and the distribution to the shops and hospitals spread across several European countries including, but not limited to Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Belgium, Netherlands and Germany.

Staff

Employment opportunities with Drammes varies from administrative roles that may require good financial or business minds, preferably with foreign languages, to sales staff who wish to travel to negotiate new suppliers and deals, to those based in their shops from the local area. The company also operates a well-respected apprenticeship scheme with a preference for recruiting Durmstrang graduates out of Tangibles studies.

Competition

Owing to the company's size, they are often able to drive low prices with their suppliers, akin to multi-national Muggle companies. The size of their orders can be hard to keep up with for producers but highly lucrative, which often convinces herbologists to sign agreements to make less of a profit per unit.

There have been cases in the past when owing to a language barrier, the supplier has tried to outwit Drammes Apotek staff, but this has not ended amicably.

In 2004 a false translation of documents to import Jobberknoll feathers for the company, locked them into a contract of ten years without reducing the price even when the market grew and the price per hundred-feather dropped. Drammes sent a team of staff with some heavy-handed accomplices and Johann Storm to ensure the supplier agreed to rewrite the contract, or be blacklisted in the European region. Persuasion tactics included physical force. Subsequently the price dropped below their market value, and the suppliers were forced to obey.

At Absit Omen

Dietrich Eisenberg may have apprenticed with the Berlin branch after leaving Durmstrang in 1991.

Elixa Mordent worked with the company in Sweden 1999 until the end of 2008, becoming a branch manager.

Johann Storm was employed as an ad-hoc translator for the company's head offices between 2004-2008 before he moved to Britain.

Heinz Werner is an Apothecary Certifier and has worked for the company most of his life.