In this Issue


“Our goal here is to improve health care for Canadians,” Katz Group Canada CEO Andy Giancamilli told Drug Store News about the company’s new Rexall Healthy Living Pharmacy concept it opened in six of its stores across Canada in 2010. The concept, which borrows some of the design innovation and cache usually associated with the beauty category to better engage customers around health and wellness, includes more than 200 health information touch points.


Customers are seeing purple again — reminiscent of another switch that took advantage of the eye-catching color purple. Sanofi-Aventis through its Chattem division in March launched Allegra, the last of the second-generation antihistamines. And purple-powered displays, like this in a Walmart in Lancaster, Pa., dotted the retail pharmacy landscape.


Before Walgreens bought out Duane Reade, the intersection of Avenue J and East 15th Street in Brooklyn was home to a Walgreens and a Duane Reade store. Shortly after the purchase, Walgreens shut down the Duane Reade store, an older store that had a less visible location under elevated railway tracks. Now, independent pharmacies along Avenue J are trying to attract the business of former Duane Reade customers.


The time is now to move any breast-feeding products from the floor of the baby care aisle to eye level — as Walgreens has done here — because mom’s interest in the category received two big boosts earlier this year.


Call it “the attack of the coupon-crazed shelf sweepers.” It’s the most aggressive form of bargain hunting by consumers willing to spend hours searching out coupon deals, to stock up with enough product to last their families for a year and to turn their homes into veritable warehouses.


Target is encouraging customers to direct their sights toward its in-store pharmacies with its “Ask Us” campaign. The campaign includes signage located throughout the store designed to direct shoppers to seek information from pharmacists about everything from allergies to generic discounts, promoting Target’s pharmacists as experts on medicines.


The signage includes floor graphics in the aisles leading to the pharmacy counter, signs hanging from ceilings and placards posted on endcaps. 



Shoppers of Bed Bath & Beyond’s Upper East Side location in New York can experience the ultimate beauty destination thanks to the recent opening there of L’Oréal Paris’ first-ever “boutique.”



In response to the news last month that Rite Aid named Tony Montini EVP merchandising, DSN shared this exchange with an online reader:


Dear DSN;


I am a Rite Aid pharmacist in the small desert town of Needles, Calif. Needles is a poor town with a lot of our business being Medi-Cal — state Medicaid. ... This is the rub: There are no Medi-Cal providers in the city! Most people have to go to the emergency room, or those with Medicare D plans [travel] 20 miles across the Colorado River to Arizona. ...