Top Retailers

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — To deliver the value of a supercenter with the convenience of a drug store — that is the essence of the Dollar General strategy.


Walmart’s first small-format Express stores have only been open about six months, but strong initial consumer acceptance, coupled with increasingly flexible real estate, points to the near certainty of an eventual rollout.


The stores range between 10,000 and 15,000 sq. ft., offer about 13,000 products and were developed so Walmart could tap potential growth opportunities in rural and urban markets. Walmart expects to end its current fiscal year in late January 2012 with 11 Walmart Express stores following the opening of the first units in northwest Arkansas.


PROVO, Utah — Orabrush tongue cleaners have become a case study in Internet marketing success with the brand’s nearly 300,000 Facebook fans and quirky YouTube videos that have attracted more than 40 million views and opened the doors for retail distribution.


Two years ago, the company produced and posted its first YouTube video with a $500 budget, offering the product for sale online. The videos clearly struck a cord and today, online support has translated into securing space in 16,000 retail locations worldwide, including Walmart and CVS this fall.

WOONSOCKET, R.I. — In recognition of National Influenza Vaccination Week from Dec. 4 to 10, CVS/pharmacy and its in-store health clinic business, MinuteClinic, are reminding families to "vaccinate before they celebrate" the holidays and receive their annual flu shot before the flu season peaks.

Bootlegging, debauching and murdering its way through the second season, HBO’s Prohibition-themed series “Boardwalk Empire” has dramatized an era alien to its viewers but whose vestiges have remained in much of the country.


Sam’s Club has been on a roll the past few years, and an emphasis on health-and-wellness categories has figured prominently into the warehouse club operator’s improved performance.


When someone says “pharmacy automation and technology,” the image that most likely springs to mind is a pharmacy robot dispensing pills in a bottle or pharmacists managing operations or looking at patients’ medical records and electronic prescriptions with the latest pharmacy software.


But technology increasingly is migrating out from behind the counter as pharmacy retailers wield it not just to make the jobs of pharmacists and pharmacy techs easier, but to enhance the experience of the customer as well.


SEATTLE — The combined store count of the county's largest dollar store chains outnumbers that of the largest retail pharmacy chains as continued economic difficulties drive the channel's growth, according to a new study released Monday by Colliers International.