Shoppers Drug Mart retools winning store format

Drug Store News,  June 21, 2004  by Michael Johnsen

• E-mail
• Print
• Link

TORONTO -- It was two Mars ago that Shoppers Drug art crafted a new store format prominently featuring beauty and convenience food items. Since that time, the chain's oversized 15,000-square-foot drug store format has been one of the drivers behind Shoppers Drug Mart's fiscal success.

Conventional wisdom holds that you don't mess with a good thing, but because chairman and chief executive officer Glenn Murphy is not one to "rest on his laurels," as he reiterated several times during the chain's annual meeting here last month, the management team at Shoppers Drug Mart has continued to tweak its format, creating a new store prototype at the corner of Woodbine and O'Connor Drive, just north of Toronto proper.

"Historically, the position of drug stores [in Canada] has been much more on the reactive side," Murphy said at the meeting. "We believe that the position of our brand today, given our store proposition, enables us to [be] a much more preventative brand [with a] proactive nature."

And now it seems as though Shoppers Drug Mart may be breaking new ground for a big-box drug chain--again.

Similar to the format created two years ago, the sole entrance to the latest store prototype is located at the center of the front facade. Consumers entering the store are immediately surrounded by a white-fixtured beauty department staffed by two to three black-clad cosmeticians. Customers have come to recognize Shoppers Drug Mart's more than 4,300 cosmeticians by their casual black uniforms.

In the new store, a straight walk from the beauty department to the rear of the store leads to another merchandising bubble housing the chain's enlarged natural health set, where the fixtures pop out from the walls in a wave design.

In addition to dietary supplements, the expanded natural health segment features a number of healthy snack offerings and quick-meal pastas, as well as premium-positioned natural juice drinks, such as papaya juice. In the center of the health segment, which is delineated from the rest of the store by soft brown tiling, there is a touch-screen computer console that offers consumers a virtual library of health-related information.

Shoppers Drug Mart eventually hopes to staff the section with a nutritionist, creating a second destination center with a dedicated staff member within the store. Currently, the chain is dedicating 20 labor hours per week to the notion as a test market.

From Shoppers Drug Mart's Healthy Living section, there is a clear line of sight to the pharmacy department, which spans the length of the rear of the store. Walking along the pharmacy counter, shoppers see a significant over-the-counter section to the right and come to an area featuring value-priced and bulk general merchandise that looks very much like the club channel it is meant to replicate.

Near the grocery-styled checkout lanes at the front of the store is a one-hour photo development department. There is a selection of digital cameras along one segment of the photo counter--firmly secured to the counter to prevent theft while allowing consumers to handle the cameras.

Along the way from the club area to the photo department there is an expansive consumables selection that features two coffin fixtures--one refrigerated and one frozen--presenting a selection of convenience food offerings from frozen fries to a broad selection of cheeses, hummus and ready-made lasagnas and salads.

And still the executives at Shoppers Drug Mart are not done tweaking.

This summer, Shoppers Drug Mart plans to focus on the back bench and roll out a new pharmacy prototype, one equipped with the next generation of its pharmacy work-flow system: HealthWatch.

"We pioneered the HealthWatch system 15 years ago as a leading retailer," Murphy said. The new HealthWatch system is faster, Web-based and performs many essential functions to free up time for more patient-pharmacist consultations. "That's the future of our business, and every chance we get, we invest energy, capital and money to make sure the pharmacy moves as efficiently as possible," Murphy noted.

COPYRIGHT 2004 Reproduced with permission of the copyright holder. Further reproduction or distribution is prohibited without permission.
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning