Walgreens History and Background

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Walgreens History and Background: Walgreens was founded in 1901 measuring 50 feet by 20 feet by Charles R. Walgreen, Sr.. Mr. Walgreen was born near Galesburg, Illinois and his family later relocated to Dixon, Illinois at town about 60 miles north of his birthplace. Mr. Walgreens’ father was a farmer who turned into a businessperson and saw a great potential of the Rock River Valley (Walgreen, n.d., p.1). At age 16, Charles Walgreen had his first experience working in a drug store. He didn’t always have pleasurable experiences but it was a job with pay. He had an accident at a shoe factory that cut off his left middle finger from the top joint. This injury also stops him from playing any sports at school. After a year and a half with the drug store, Mr. Walgreen left to pursue something bigger in the big city-Chicago. Mr. Walgreen moved to Chicago in 1893, where he found at least 1,500 drug stores already competing for business. Mr. Walgreen was broke and threw a couple of pennies in the Chicago River and committed himself to his profession and a lifetime of perseverance and hard work. He did not want help from his family because he wanted to be successful on his own (Walgreen, n.d., p. 1). Mr. Walgreen knew if he was going to be successful in the pharmacy business, he had to learn as much as he could from other pharmacists. Mr. Walgreen worked a series of jobs with the top leading pharmacists named Samuel Rosenfeld, Max Grieben, William G. Valentine, and Isaac W. Blood. However, Mr. Walgreen found that these pharmacists were teaching him old fashioned complacent methods of running a drugstore. He asked himself, “where was the selection of goods that customers really wanted and what about the customer service?” Mr. Walgreen c... ... middle of paper ... ... $1.2 billion, driven by improved working capital and drugstore performance. First quarter sales increased 9.5 percent from the prior-year quarter to $16.4 billion. Total sales in comparable stores (those open at least a year) increased 4.9 percent in the quarter, while front-end comparable store sales increased 2.7 percent. Prescription sales, which accounted for 66.2 percent of sales in the quarter, climbed 10.0 percent, while prescription sales in comparable stores increased 6.1 percent. The company's number of prescriptions filled increased 12.0 percent over last year's first quarter, including a benefit of 0.7 percentage points due to more patients filling 90-day prescriptions. The company exceeded by 5.5 percentage points the industry-wide prescription growth rate, excluding Walgreens, during the same period as reported by IMS Health (Walgreens, n.d., p. 1).

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