China Jo-Jo Drugstores, the China-based retail and wholesale distributor of pharmaceutical and health care products has opened eight new stores in a single day.

The new retail pharmacies are all in Hangzhou and take the company’s network to 61 stores in China.

The eight added stores are among the 11 pharmacies the company acquired from Hangzhou Sanhao Grand Pharmacy Chain last October. These pharmacies had been remodelled with significant improvements and relocated to better locations, “more in line with the company’s business model of carrying thousands of pharmaceutical and healthcare products in each store, and offering better in-store experience to our customers”, it said in a statement.

The new stores are located closer to several major residential areas, thus greatly enhancing the company’s bricks and mortar store penetration in Hangzhou.

China Jo-Jo says its pharmacy network will also serve as potential delivery platforms when the company unveils its Online-to-Offline (O2O) strategy later this year.

Four of the new pharmacies are currently qualified to take Social Health Insurance (“SHI”), China’s national health insurance plan aimed to provide universal health insurance coverage to Chinese citizens. The other four pharmacies have passed all SHI tests and are expected to be qualified within two or three months.

Traditionally, SHI participants, who tend to be its longer term customers, account for more than 50 per cent of the company’s retail pharmacy sales.

Chairman and CEO Lei Liu said in anticipation of the Chinese government’s approval for online prescription drug sales in 2015, China Jo-Jo is making various strategic moves, focusing on product offerings and easy accessibility to online and offline stores.