Bilibala: to me, products in Shoppers Drug Mart is very expensive, but, irrationally, customers enjoy shopping at Shoppers Drug Mart. As her shareholders, this is a strong economic moat that I need to take into account in her stock price. CA$44 is really attractive to BUY.http://www.torontolife.com/features/new-general-store/Shoppers outposts are suddenly everywhere, fulfilling our late-night need for milk, organic chocolate and self-bronzer. The evolution of the corner drugstore to consumer playground
By Maryam SanatiJust five minutes into Seniors’ Day at my local Shoppers Drug Mart, I’ve loaded up on Pampers, a container of organic flax meal, an electric toothbrush, Life brand vitamins and Advil. I am not a senior. I am at least three decades away from retirement. But here I am, on the last Thursday of the month, snaking my shopping cart around walkers and bundle buggies, hunting for what I need. My mother has split off into another tributary in the store. Divide and conquer. In a sense, I have invited myself to the monthly meeting of her club, where members get 20 per cent off, and I am behaving somewhat overzealously.
There’s no rule against shopping with a senior on Seniors’ Day and taking advantage of their discount. It’s doubtful that the company cares about the finer details of borrowed seniorship. The store is full.
“They give you a $10 off coupon if you spend $50,” my mom says to me as we line up for a cashier, every till buzzing. It is in this line that I realize how devoted Shoppers Drug Mart customers are. Loyalty is rare in this depressed retail environment—a time when, save for special mom-and-pop survivors, a cherished butcher or cheese vendor or a barbershop, most of us have collectively turned away from the small and into the viable expanse of the big.
The chain has not escaped criticism for its aspirations. In late 2007, negative reaction burbled up when construction of a super-sized Shoppers started on the Danforth, pushing out the Ralph Day Funeral Home and a few other small businesses. Inevitably, though, the issue was forgotten. Now residents of Greektown are in that very store late at night, filling their prescriptions and buying their Toblerones. That’s what happens when a big box goes urban; convenience converts even skeptics. They find themselves drawn to the possibility of buying their vitamins and their hair elastics and even some of their electronic gadgets (certain Shoppers now even sell Wiis) in one amenable shopping environment, while also tending to the health of their families.
We go there mostly for necessity: toilet paper, cold remedies, prescriptions (which constitute some 50 per cent of the company’s sales), kitty litter. The proposition that then engages us is the huge amount of choice we see and the other things that we feel suit our lives in a way that is not entirely, convincingly, necessary but is certainly somehow justifiable.
And there is another hook. I can cash in my thousands of Optimum points, accumulated steadily through 10- or 20-times-the-points promotions, only to rack up more Optimum points to bring me back for more shopping tomorrow or the day after. This is every retailer’s reverie: the loyal spend while earning loyalty points to enable them to spend again—the sweet circle of shopping life.
Like newspaper boxes, parking meters and Starbucks, if something is ubiquitous, it becomes part of the background of a city, almost invisible to the people who pass by it every day. We become unmoved to consider how the thing that is everywhere came to be, and just how much of the city’s real estate it consumes. And that’s why I was surprised to discover how many Shoppers Drug Marts there are. Across this city, 127 have planted their patriotic red and white flag posts—the corporate colours, accented by sky blue. (More than 1,170 exist in Canada, operating as Pharmaprix in Quebec.) There are also 65 Shoppers Home Health Care stores, which sell canes, walkers, wheelchairs, braces and more.
The Optimum card, launched 10 years ago, is the more agile competitor to Air Miles, a card that is aligned with Rexall Pharma Plus. By comparison, Optimum points accrue more quickly, and they’re appealingly easy to use—each receipt tells you how many you’ve got. All you have to do is carry the card in your wallet. Approximately 2.5 million of us, or nearly half the GTA population, are Optimum cardholders. Nationwide, 9.5 million are active card users of Optimum.
Eighty per cent of cardholders are women. The privacy statement for the card notes, “We do not rent, sell or provide the personal information of Shoppers Optimum members.” But every swipe builds a sense of how 9.5 million people shop around the country, and the company tracks the changes they exhibit in their spending habits, the average amount of money spent per visit, and how new products are being received by whom.
Targeted mailings are sent out based on Optimum data: for instance, Shoppers knows I buy Pampers, Camilia and Children’s Tylenol, and so my local store mailed an invitation to my home address to join the VIB (Very Important Baby) program, which promises it will give “you, and everyone who cares for your little one, more rewards and exclusive offers.”
Shoppers is determined to extend its reach. It’s increasing its number of private labels from 11 to 20; launching more of its gleaming Murale cosmetics boutiques (Shoppers’ answer to Sephora), one of which opened at the Shops at Don Mills last summer; and, most significantly, introducing large-format stores, still called “prototypes,” with huge selection and twice the square footage of old-format Shoppers. The majority of Shoppers Drug Marts built since 2002 are the giant prototype stores, averaging 14,000 square feet. They’re taking over the city and slowly redefining how we shop.
Faith Popcorn famously noted that, “Shopping is the museum of the 21st century.” When you’re in the Avenue and Lawrence Shoppers, you know what she’s talking about. It is a model of the new prototype store, and it’s more futuristic and splendid than any drugstore I have ever seen. The aisles are wide, the sightlines are good, and the windows are practically floor-to-ceiling. Open 24 hours, the store is staffed by 90 employees. (The staff complement was doubled when the store expanded in 2008 from a smaller location up the road.)
I took a tour of the facility recently with John Caplice, an affable 40-something father of three who is a senior VP at Shoppers. We start in the BeautyBoutique as he explains the concept behind Shoppers’ cosmetic sales: don’t keep anything, even the high-end stuff, under glass.
The so-called “open sell” strategy is winning business away from weakened department stores. Nearby are two beauty consultants if you need them. “We give customers the choice of service or self-service,” Caplice says, repeating the word “convenience,” which, in a company that professes to be the most convenient retailer in Canada, is an ingrained mantra.
In the cosmetics area, the advisers have no particular affiliation, a philosophical split from the cosmetics floor in any department store, where Lancôme competes with Shiseido and so on. The staff working here are trained to compare and contrast the benefits of each brand. By the end of 2010, there will be 230 Shoppers stores in Canada with this beauty format.
The Avenue and Lawrence store also includes a super-deluxe baby section with a built-in fridge stocking organic baby food. At the back, the dispensary looks nothing like the small-windowed pharmacies of yore. Clerks are stationed around an open curved counter, and next to the prescription drop-off area is a comfortable waiting lounge and a private room for sensitive pharmacist-patient consultations.
In the Food Essentials section, which since 2002 has been established in close to 600 stores, you can find good mozzarella, designer salads and organic products from Nativa, the private label Shoppers launched in March 2008 with 170 items in orange packaging. There are now 200 Nativa goods; I’m partial to the gingersnaps.
Caplice takes me to the toothpaste aisle. Years ago, a dental care section was four feet long. At the Avenue and Lawrence store, there are 28 feet of dental hygiene products, lip balm, floss and other attendant consumer goods. I feel like I’m inspecting a Queen’s regiment made up of toothbrushes.
This is precisely why there are large-format stores in the first place. Caplice explains that the retail space had to expand to accommodate an ever-increasing assortment of stuff—Shoppers’ own products and innovations from the leading consumer companies.
