Special Reports Archive

Increased attention was given to Walmart’s multichannel efforts in this year’s supplier survey — and for good reason. Amazon.com is now in a virtual dead heat with the dollar store channel in terms of the retailer/channel that suppliers view as the most significant competitive threat.


Perhaps the iconic scene at the end of Ridley Scott’s 1991 movie “Thelma & Louise” — with Gina Davis’ and Susan Sarandon’s characters hurdling into the Grand Canyon in a green convertible — is a good metaphor for what’s happening in the generic drug industry these days.


Continued growth and increased competition from Amazon.com and the dollar stores. Improved in-stock levels offset by questionable in-store execution. Reduced buyer turnover and senior executives receptive to trading partner views.


In the classic Arabian Nights tale “Aladdin and the Magic Lamp,” the sorcerer who sold Aladdin the lamp containing the genie attempts to get it back by walking through the town where Aladdin and his wife live disguised as a merchant, trading “new lamps 
for old.” 


Rubbing pill bottles isn’t likely to bring forth any genies ready to grant three wishes, but the idea of inputting something old and outputting something shiny and new is sort of the gist behind 
branded generics.


When planning commission officials in Northwest Arkansas gave Walmart the go ahead for a 40,000-sq.-ft. store in Bentonville, Ark., back in 1998, it was the retail industry’s biggest story that year.


Change was in the air again this year at Sam’s Club as the warehouse club division welcomed yet another CEO and head merchant combination. In early 2012, Rosalind Brewer became president and CEO, and Charles Redfield was named EVP merchandising. The change could have had suppliers saying, “here we go again,” due to Sam’s history of senior leadership turnover. Instead, the transition was apparently painless for the 67% of survey respondents who sell products to Sam’s.

SWIFTWATER, Pa. — Sanofi Pasteur announced Monday the presentation of three clinical trials of an experimental influenza vaccine.

For branded drug makers, the pharmaceutical patent cliff has never loomed higher or steeper. The exposure of so many of the world’s biggest-selling medicines to generic competition for the first time is redefining the pricing model for many of the most widely prescribed classes of pharmaceuticals — reducing costs for health plans, payers and patients; scrambling drug makers’ balance sheets; and potentially boosting both drug utilization and adherence rates as reduced out-of-pocket costs induce more patients to fill their prescriptions.