Walgreens closing 200 stores

[ynkeesfn82]

Walgreens has announced that they are closing 200 stores.

http://www.usnews.com/news/business/articles/2015/04/09/walgreens-aims-to-close-about-200-us-stores

[TheFugitive]

Not surprised.  Another chain that overbuilt in a rather excessive way
(not unlike Ames was doing when I worked for them).

A lot of the Walgreens here are in locations where you can walk out into
the parking lot, throw a rock, and it will land in the parking lot of a CVS
or a Rite Aid.

[ynkeesfn82]

Many years ago the CEO of one of the pharmacy chains said they like to open up across the street from their competitor.

It's that in Plainville, Connecticut - CVS and Walgreens are next to each other separated by Farmington Ave (Route 10). In downtown Southington, Connecticut CVS and Walgreen's are across the street from each other and there is an older Rite Aid in the area as well. At least where they built the new Rite Aid in 2009 there's no room to build a competitor across the street or next door. Until now there weren't any competing pharmacies across the street from each other in Bristol, Connecticut. Now they're building a new CVS across Route 6 from an older Rite Aid in North Side Square Plaza. In Bristol Walgreens wanted to build on an out parcel of the Bristol Center Mall, but the city said no since it didn't fit with the city's "planned" redevelopment of downtown. (Which aside from demolishing the mall has yet to happen). That Walgreen's would've been across North Main Street from CVS. Instead they built on the corner of Main and South Streets, making that corner much nicer than what had been there previously and there's no place to a build a competing pharmacy across the street.

[TheFugitive]

Though it's not a new phenomenon.  My paternal grandfather was a pharmacist, and my
dad has often wryly noted that he "bought a drugstore on a street where you could walk out
the door, toss a rock in any direction and hit another drug store."

It was true.  I believe there were 5 or 6 on that street at one time.

[BillyGr]

They do seem to congregate - although the Albany (NY) area hasn't gotten too many Walgreens since they came (back) to the area a few years ago, the first two are on corners of Rt. 155.  One has a Rite Aid diagonally opposite, and the other has a CVS Diagonal with a Rite Aid a tiny bit down on the same side (of Western).  Actually, this intersection also had, just up on the "4th" corner an old Eckerd in a shopping plaza, making it a 4 drugstore area for a time (after Walgreens opened and before Rite Aid bought Eckerd and closed that store).

While those two stores are not too far apart, they haven't built many others in the area (only 1 in Albany proper, 1 in Troy, 1 down in Hudson with nothing in between and a few farther up towards Saratoga).

[Hudsons81]

They do seem to congregate

It's somewhat the same case here, although Walgreens was a rather late entry into the Detroit market, not entering until the late 1990's (both CVS and Rite-Aid were already fair game following their respective acquisitions of Arbor and Perry), although Walgreens already had a couple older stores in southwest Michigan (I'm surprised they only had like a couple stores there, considering how close southwest Michigan is to their home base of Chicago)-I live not far from one of Walgreens' first Detroit-area stores, the one in Riverview.

There is a newer Walgreens which opened about 10 years ago that I could walk to in just five minutes. However, on that topic, there is a CVS (which was likely the very last Arbor opened prior to the acquisition) a few blocks west on the same road, but it's in Southgate.