Drug store chains pushed out independent pharmacies. Here’s why they’re now closing too | CNN Business

July 3, 2024July 2, 2024 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Walgreens said Thursday that it plans to close a “significant” number of its roughly 8,600 stores in the United States. Around 25% of Walgreens’ stores aren’t profitable, and the chain will look to close stores that are right by one another or struggling to hold down theft, CEO Tim Wentworth said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal.

Walgreens and other retailers have been hit by shoplifting and resorted to locking up items or closing high-theft stores since the pandemic, but Walgreens’ problems are much deeper, including competition and failed growth strategies. Walgreens admitted last year it “cried too much” over the business impact of shoplifting.

The latest closures are part of a larger downturn, not just for Walgreens, but for other drug store chains, too, after years of expansion. Walgreens said in 2019 it would close 200 stores and last year announced an additional 150 store closures.

Amazon is replacing Walgreens in the Dow Jones Industrial Average | CNN Business

February 21, 2024February 20, 2024 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Walgreens Boots Alliance is getting the boot from the 30-stock Dow Jones Industrial Average and Amazon is taking its place.

S&P Dow Jones Indices, which manages the index, said in a statement Tuesday that the change is intended to reflect “the evolving nature of the American economy” by increasing the Dow’s consumer retail exposure.

The change means that investors who bet on the Dow Jones Industrial Average will now have exposure to Amazon’s stock performance.

Amazon joins Apple and Microsoft as the third company from the “Magnificent Seven,” a group of high-performing tech stocks, to join the Dow 30. The other four companies in the group — Meta, Nvidia, Tesla, and Alphabet — are not included in the index, though all seven stocks are included in the much larger S&P 500 index.

The 10 Commandments of Business from Jim Collins | Page19

June 24, 2015June 25, 2015 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

1. Find your Hedgehog concept. — Good to Great

Imagine a fox hunting a hedgehog. The fox is crafty and invents a battery of complex tactics to get at the smaller creature, yet despite all of its cunning, the fox never wins. The hedgehog has a simple, foolproof parry to any attack: it curls up and becomes an unbreachable spiked ball.

According to Collins, good-to-great companies find their own Hedgehog concept—something simple, clear, and fail-proof—by asking themselves three key questions:

What can we be the best in the world at?

What can we be passionate about?

What is the key economic indicator we should concentrate on?

Collins found that after an average of 4 years’ iteration and debate, good-to-great companies discovered their own Hedgehog concept at the intersection of these questions. After that point, every decision in the company was made in line with it, and success followed.

Take the example of drugstore chain, Walgreens. The Walgreens Hedgehog concept was to be the best, most convenient drugstore with a high customer profit per visit. By pursuing it relentlessly, Walgreens outperformed the general stock market by a factor of 7. By contrast, their competitor, Eckerd Pharmacy, lacked a simple Hedgehog concept and grew sporadically in several misguided directions, eventually ceasing to exist as an independent company.