SLIDESHOW

Crossmark held its party Friday night during NACDS Annual Meeting at the Sanctuary resort in Scottsdale, Ariz.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — As Mother’s Day approaches, Hallmark is rolling out its latest greeting card innovation, as well as new designs for its Signature line of cards. The company notes that in the U.S., 113 million cards are exchanged for Mother’s Day, with data from the National Retail Federation showing that the day is second only to Christmas in participation.

NEW YORK — CVS Health on April 19 officially debuted a new store design to enhance the retail customer experience with a new assortment of healthier food, health-focused products and expanded beauty selections, paired with informational signage throughout the store to help customers discover new offerings. 

The company’s front of store today will clearly not be its front of store tomorrow. According to CVS, combined with its innovative digital programs, these changes represent the “next evolution of the customer experience at CVS Pharmacy.”

IRI and the Boston Consulting Group identified five trends exploited by the consumer packaged goods winners in their latest growth leaders report. According to the report, the best CPG companies successfully merged health and wellness with convenience, benefitted from the tailwinds driving growth across the convenience channel, capitalized on mergers and acquisitions to accelerate growth, tapped into ethnic flavor trends and leveraged their social media outreach.

Merging heath and wellness with convenience

Although the consumer packaged goods industry is still climbing the sales charts to record heights — the industry reached $797 billion in 2016 — the engines driving that growth are beginning to sputter, IRI and Boston Consulting Group reported last month as part of their latest growth leaders report, “CPG Growth Leaders - Strategic Analytics.” According to the report, dollar sales growth is at its lowest since 2011, coming in at just 1.4% versus the prior year.

One of the biggest trends in food and beverage in the past several years has been in better-for-you offerings — something that’s expected to continue to influence new products as consumers remain focused on what’s in their favorite snacks and beverages. When IRI published its 2017 New Product Pacesetters report in early April, the firm noted that one of the drivers of category growth has been healthier innovation. Of IRI’s 100 New Product Pacesetters in the food and beverage category, 47 of them featured healthier-for-you-attributes.

Editor’s Note: The Drug Store News Industry Issues Summit gathered a record crowd in December at the New York Athletic Club in Manhattan to discuss the most important issues facing the industry today. Three roundtable discussions took place at the event, one regarding chronic care (which appeared in the February issue of DSN), the front-end panel (which appeared in the March issue of DSN), and this health, wellness and technology panel.

There is no question that one of the top nonprescription categories contributing to both sales and foot traffic right now is allergy. According to IRI data, sales of nasal sprays — the category that captures all of the latest nasal corticosteroid Rx-to-OTC switches, such as Flonase and Nasacort — are up 10.2% to $1.2 billion across total U.S. multi-outlets for the 52 weeks ended Feb. 19.