| Walgreens |
Walgreen Co. (NYSE: WAG), d/b/a Walgreens (without an apostrophe), is the largest drugstore chain in the United States of America. As of March 31st, the company operates 8,169 drugstores across all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. Founded in Chicago, Illinois in 1901, and has since expanded throughout the United States, Walgreens is currently headquartered in the nearby suburb of Deerfield, Illinois.
Walgreens provides access to consumer goods and services and pharmacy, health and wellness services in America through its retail drugstores, Walgreens Health Services division and Walgreens Health and Wellness division. Walgreens Health Services offers pharmacy patients and prescription drug and medical plans through Walgreens Mail Service Inc., Walgreens Home Care Inc., Walgreens Specialty Pharmacy LLC and SeniorMed LLC (a pharmacy provider to long-term care facilities). Walgreens Health and Wellness division includes Take Care Health Systems. Walgreens has 7,600 drugstores as of September 30, 2010.
History
The Walgreens chain began in 1901, with a drug store on the corner of Bowen Ave and Cottage Grove, Chicago, Illinois, United States owned by Galesburg native Charles R. Walgreen, Sr. By 1913, there were five Walgreen drugstores. He added several improvements to the stores such as soda fountains and luncheon service. He also began to make his own line of drug products and was then able to control the quality of the items and sell them at lower prices. By 1913, 12 stores were in operation, all in Chicago. And in that same year, all the stores were consolidated under Walgreen Co. The 1920s was a very successful decade for Walgreens. In 1923, the company opened stores outside of residential areas and also introduced the malted milk shake in 1922. Walgreens also established its own ice cream manufacturing plants to match the demand for ice cream at that time. By the mid 1920s, there were about 44 stores with an annual sale of 1.2 million dollars. By this time, Walgreens had expanded into other states like Wisconsin, Missouri, and Minnesota. By 1930, there were 397 stores in 87 cities with annual sales of 4 million dollars. This expansion can be in part attributed to the collection of bootlegged alcohol, mainly whiskey, which Walgreen would often stock under the counter, as accounted in Daniel Okrent's Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition. The company did not really suffer from the Stock Market Crash and Great Depression. By 1934, Walgreens was operating in 30 states with over 601 stores. After Charles Walgreen Sr. died in 1939, his son Charles R. Walgreen Jr. took over and ran the chain until his retirement. The Charles R. Walgreen Jr. years were relatively prosperous, but lacked the massive expansion seen in the early part of the century. Charles "Cork" R. Walgreen III took over after Jr's retirement in the early 1950s, and brought the company through many modern initiatives, including the switch to a computer inventory based system (bar code scanning). The Walgreen family was not involved in senior management of the company for a short period following Charles' retirement. In 1986, it acquired the MediMart chain from Stop & Shop. In 1995, Kevin P. Walgreen was made a vice-president and promoted to Senior Vice President - Store Operations in 2006.
On July 12, 2006, David Bernauer stepped down as CEO of Walgreens and was replaced by company president, Jeff Rein. Holding degrees in accounting and pharmacy from the University of Arizona, Rein was a pharmacist, store manager, district manager, and treasurer prior to being named Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board. Greg Wasson, former President of Walgreens Health Services, was named President and Chief Operations Officer.
On October 10, 2008, Jeff Rein retired from Walgreens and was replaced by Alan G. McNally as Chairman and Acting CEO.
On January 26, 2009, Gregory Wasson was named CEO, effective February 1, 2009.
Recent expansion
In 2006, Walgreens acquired the Happy Harry's chain in Delaware, Pennsylvania, Maryland and New Jersey. Walgreen’s opened its 6000th store in New Orleans, Louisiana, in October 2007.
In January 2008 Walgreens purchased 20 locations in Puerto Rico from Farmacias El Amal
As of July 2009, Walgreens has a store in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
On February 17, 2010, Walgreens announced plans to acquire New York City-area chain Duane Reade for $1.075 billion, including debt.
On March 24, 2011 Walgreens acquired Drugstore.com for $409 million.
Store model
Originally, Walgreens stores were connected to local groceries. In Chicago, which is Walgreens primary market, they teamed up with either Eagle Food Centers or Dominick's Finer Foods, usually with a "walkthru" to the adjoining store and often sharing personnel. This concept was instated to compete with the popular dual store format used by chief competitor Jewel-Osco/Albertsons-Sav-On. Eventually, they ended the relationship with Eagle and focused primarily on a connection to the Dominick's stores, which were considered to be of a better quality. PharmX-Rexall stepped in and filled the vacated Walgreen locations joined to Eagle stores.
In its 2009 business model Walgreens locations are always set up as freestanding locations at the corners of busy, intersecting streets on the prevailing side of the street with the most traffic flow -- literally making it a "corner drugstore" similar to how many independent pharmacies evolved over the years in the United States. This also usually allows the store to offer services such as a drive-through pharmacy and 24-hour shopping that would not be possible in a shopping mall. Walgreens also offers "auto refill" so customers can have prescriptions automatically refilled; sells specialty coffees, Icees and fountain beverages at select stores as part of the pilot "Café W" program. Over 3000 locations have equipment to refill ink jet cartridges.
The store management team usually includes a Store Manager (MGR), an Executive Assistant Manager (EXA), and at least one Assistant Manager (MGT). In 2009, Walgreens introduced the Store Team Lead (STL), or "non-management keyholder", position in many of its stores.
Environmental record
In 2006, in efforts to clean the environments of the communities in which Walgreen stores operated, Walgreens teamed up with ImaginIt to bring solar power systems to two distribution centers and 100 out of 6,200 stores. This has significantly lowered the amount of electricity supplied from outside sources. The distribution centers and stores in California make 20% to 50% of their own electricity from the solar power system.
Walgreens also started testing the prospects of energy saving lighting equipment in its stores. A few of its test stores have used a system of lighting called "dimming/daylight harvesting ballast," created by Axis Technology Group.
The company has also removed arguably harmful air fresheners from its stores, and started selling products made from recycled juice cartons.
In newer stores, Walgreens installed motion sensitive lights in sections of the building. The lights only turn on when someone enters the room. Rooms that have these lights include breakrooms, restrooms, the office, the warehouse/receiving areas, and the pharmacy.
Consumer record
As of June 2008, Walgreens "agreed to stop altering prescriptions without physician approval as part of a multi-state agreement to settle allegations of improper billing," reported the Knoxville News Sentinel:
"Walgreens was accused of switching the dosage forms on three medications commonly prescribed for Medicaid patients without doctor approvals in order to boost profits. This resulted in Medicaid programs nationwide paying much more for the medications than they normally would have, according to a press release by the [Tennessee] attorney general's office. Walgreen Co. agreed to comply with state and federal laws on the matter, plus pay $35 million to the federal government, 42 states and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico."
"The compliance agreement will be in effect for five years. Walgreens did not admit liability, as part of the settlement," reported the Chicago Sun-Times.
The Walgreens web site, www.walgreens.com, invited users to write reviews of some OTC products such as vitamins and nutritionals, but did not invite users to write reviews of the corresponding Walgreens-branded products. However, a recent revision of the Walgreens web site has added the ability to review any product it sells.
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