Every brand has a special story. The history of the RICHTOFIT brand goes back to the early 1980s when the research team of Richter Gedeon pharmaceutical company, called Kőbánya Pharmaceutical Factory at the time, was given the task of developing a herbal, modern and effective product family. The key to this concept was for the new product family exclusively produced by the pharmaceutical factory to meet current consumer demands.

RICHTOFIT sport advertisments from the 80s

"The herbal product family named RICHTOFIT was the first series of products to appear on the market, after which RICHTOFIT SPORT cream was introduced in 1985, which soon became a success," says Dr György Hangay who was a member of the original research team that was responsible for developing the new products and conducting clinical research trials at the pharmaceutical company.

RICHTOFIT SPORT was the main product family of this brand, which was explicitly developed for sports persons and sporting enthusiasts and proved effective for treating muscles when engaging in sporting activities. These products were clinically tested, with professional sports persons, as well as the researchers of the College of Physical Education helping to finalise the product. Product sales increased tremendously after its introduction and thanks to the successful advertising campaign it became popular relatively soon, especially among professional sports persons and sporting enthusiasts.

The members of the Hungarian pentathlon national team advertised the brand. László Fábián, Attila Mizsér and János Martinek helped promote these products to the widest possible audience through television advertising campaigns. The brand name RICHTOFIT soon became the synonym for sports cream in Hungary, with both professional and amateur sports persons using it to treat muscle-related problems arising during sports activities.

The pentathlon golden team

At the beginning of the 1990s, the management of the Richter Gedeon pharmaceutical company stopped distributing its herbal and cosmetics products and offered to sell the RICHTOFIT brand, which by then was popular among sports persons, as well as its manufacturing plant which operated in the town of Dorog at the time. This is when Colgate-Palmolive took over the company. The American company manufactured its Palmolive cosmetics products in Dorog and continued to manufacture the products of the two Hungarian brands at this site. Later on, the management of Colgate-Palmolive decided to shut down the manufacturing plant in Dorog as a part of a global cost-efficiency process and transferred the manufacturing of the products produced in Dorog to a site in another country.

The Hungarian-owned company Pharmafit Sport Ltd. purchased RICHTOFIT from Colgate-Palmolive corporate in 2012, as an outcome of which the brand was once again under local Hungarian ownership after a long interval.

The RICHTOFIT brand has become international after Pharmafit Sport Ltd was acquired by a Hong Kong company in January 2016. Nowadays,  the company is distributing RICHTOFIT products in several countries, while keeping headquarter and production in Hungary.

Hundreds of thousands of sports persons have used the top quality RICHTOFIT sports cream over the past three decades to treat muscles worn-out during sports activities or warm up muscles. Based on market research data, users of this product are satisfied with the cream, with 93% of users saying that "it is a good, reliable product". The results of two brand research surveys conducted indicate that there is a good impression of the brand. The first research was an online panel survey conducted on nationally representative sample of 1,200 respondents aged 18-59, while in the focus group research we carried out we were curious to receive the opinions of individuals struggling with sport-related injuries, joint problems.  This research was conducted in February 2013 by Szinapszis market research company. In spite of how the brand presence of RICHTOFIT was not significant over the past few years, the brand is nevertheless widely known, highly appreciated and widely used.