In the aftermath of the failed Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc. (WBA) acquisition of Rite Aid Corp., very little has happened. Rather, it’s like the event itself, or the nonevent, was an ending, a development so sudden and final that nothing else could happen. WBA continues to gather momentum, adding sales and stores in the U.S.
As the year nears its end, surprises continue to make news in chain drug retailing. Mostly, negative surprises. Earlier this month, CVS downsized its headquarters staff by some 600 employees, stopping for a moment the retailer’s uninterrupted string of good news. Following that announcement, the Woonsocket, R.I.-based drug chain issued a warning that results might
The year 2016 is more than half over — and the news concerning the chain drug store community has hardly made a ripple. The Walgreens acquisition of Rite Aid remains a work in progress, though all parties hoped it would have been completed by now. The NACDS Total Store Expo event is unfolding without many
One-third of the way into the new year, the chain drug store industry is hardly setting any worlds on fire. Business is good, but noteworthy only in the fact that it’s not better. America’s chain drug industry has significantly dialed down the pace of mergers and acquisitions that had characterized it over the past two
The Annual Meeting of the National Association of Chain Drug Stores is once again upon us, though the calendar year hasn’t yet budged beyond April. The significance of this annual meeting has nothing to do with the calendar, however. Rather, it comes along just as retailers and suppliers begin to get the tone of the
Christmas is over, yesterday’s news. And the mass retailing community is scampering to assess its impact on sales, earnings and the future. For chain drug retailers, this holiday selling season, like so many before it, was acceptable, if hardly record-setting. As in previous years, America’s drug chains suffered from an absence of exciting new products
The retailing business in the United States may have reached an inflection point during the period around Black Friday, traditionally seen as the start of the holiday selling season. While reports from different sources about retailers’ performance during the last week of November don’t neatly align, the consensus is that e-commerce continues to gain ground
The third annual Total Store Expo, the National Association of Chain Drug Stores’ exhibit event that has replaced the association’s Marketplace Conference as mass retailing’s signature merchandising event, is about to kick off in Denver. Advance notices promise a program every bit as varied, engaging and productive as the initial Total Store Expo, which unfolded
The NACDS Annual Meeting, unfolding at the moment in Palm Beach, Fla., unofficially marks the end of the first third of the mass retailing year. Perhaps coincidently, the NACDS Total Store Expo event, scheduled for August 22 to August 25 in Denver, unofficially signals the end of the second third of this mass retailing year.
Target is officially in the convenience store business. Earlier this month the Minneapolis-based mass merchant opened two slimmed-down stores in the San Francisco Bay area. The first opened in downtown San Francisco, the second across the Bay in the college town of Berkeley. These units are the second and third “Express” stores Target has opened
