Walgreen Co. (NYSE: WAG; NASDAQ: WAG), commonly abbreviated as WAGS, doing business as Walgreens, is the largest drug retailing chain in the United States of America. As of January 31, 2012, the company operates 8,300 locations across all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. Founded in Chicago, Illinois in 1901, it has since expanded throughout the United States. Walgreens is currently headquartered in the nearby suburb of Deerfield, Illinois.

 

Overview

Walgreens provides access to consumer goods and services and pharmacy, health and wellness services in America through its retail drugstores, Walgreens Health Services division and Walgreens Health and Wellness division. Walgreens has 7,733 drugstores as of June 30, 2011. 
 

History

Company history

The Walgreens chain began in 1901, with a drug store on the corner of Bowen Ave and Cottage Grove, Chicago, Illinois, United States owned by Galesburg native Charles R. Walgreen, Sr. By 1913, there were five Walgreen drugstores. He added several improvements to the stores such as soda fountains and luncheon service. He also began to make his own line of drug products and was then able to control the quality of the items and sell them at lower prices. By 1913, 12 stores were in operation, all in Chicago. In that same year, all the stores were consolidated under Walgreen Co. The 1920s were a very successful decade for Walgreens.
 

In 1923, the company opened stores outside of residential areas and also introduced the malted milk shake in 1922. Walgreens also established its own ice cream manufacturing plants to match the demand for ice cream at that time. By the mid 1920s, there were about 44 stores with an annual sale of 1.2 million dollars. By this time, Walgreens had expanded into other states like Wisconsin, Missouri, and Minnesota.
 

By 1930, there were 397 stores in 87 cities with annual sales of 4 million dollars. This expansion can be in part attributed to the collection of bootlegged alcohol, mainly whiskey, which Walgreen would often stock under the counter, as accounted in Daniel Okrent's Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition. The Stock Market Crash of October 1929 and the subsequent Great Depression had no lasting ill effect on the company. By 1934, Walgreens was operating in 30 states with over 601 stores.

 

A Walgreens store seen in the background in Times Square on VJ Day
 

After Charles Walgreen Sr. died in 1939, his son Charles R. Walgreen Jr. took over and ran the chain until his retirement. The Charles R. Walgreen Jr. years were relatively prosperous, but lacked the massive expansion seen in the early part of the century. Charles "Cork" R. Walgreen III took over after Jr's retirement in the early 1950s, and brought the company through many modern initiatives, including the switch to a computer inventory based system (bar code scanning). The Walgreen family was not involved in senior management of the company for a short period following Charles' retirement. In 1986, it acquired the MediMart chain from Stop & Shop. In 1995, Kevin P. Walgreen was made a vice-president and promoted to Senior Vice President - Store Operations in 2006. 
 

On July 12, 2006, David Bernauer stepped down as CEO of Walgreens and was replaced by company president, Jeff Rein. Holding degrees in accounting and pharmacy from the University of Arizona, Rein was a pharmacist, store manager, district manager, and treasurer prior to being named Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board. Greg Wasson, former President of Walgreens Health Services, was named President and Chief Operations Officer.
 

On October 10, 2008, Rein abruptly quit as CEO of Walgreen Co. and was replaced by Alan G. McNally as Chairman and Acting CEO. 
 

On January 26, 2009, Gregory Wasson was named CEO, effective February 1, 2009. 
 

Recent expansion

In 2006, Walgreens acquired the Happy Harry's chain in Delaware, Pennsylvania, Maryland and New Jersey. Walgreens opened its 6000th store in New Orleans, Louisiana, in October 2007. 

In January 2008, Walgreens purchased 20 locations in Puerto Rico from Farmacias El Amal.
 

 In July 2009, Walgreens has a store in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. 
 

On February 17, 2010, Walgreens announced plans to acquire New York City-area chain Duane Reade for $1.075 billion, including debt. Walgreens continues to operate locations in the New York City metropolitan area under the Duane Reade marque, although locations near existing Walgreens locations were closed.
 

On March 24, 2011, Walgreens acquired Drugstore.com for $409 million.
 

 As of April 30, 2011, Walgreens operated 8,169 locations in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and Guam.
 

On June 19, 2012, Walgreens paid $6.7bn for a 45% stake in the Alliance Boots. 
 

On July 5, 2012, Walgreens entered into an agreement to acquire mid-south drug store chain currently operating under the USA Drug, Super D Drug, May's Drug, Med-X and Drug Warehouse banners. It is expected to close around Sept. 1st. 
 

Contributions to popular culture

Walgreens claims credit for the popularization of the malted milkshake (or at least its version of the malted milkshake), invented by Ivar "Pop" Coulson in 1922, although milkshakes and malted milk had been around for some time before. This development coincided with the invention of the electric blender in the same year.
 

Corporate affairs

Headquarters

Walgreens has its corporate headquarters in Deerfield, Illinois. As of 2009 Walgreens employed 5,200 people at its headquarters. 

In 1987 Walgreens employed about 1,100 people at its headquarters, which was at the time in an unincorporated area on the west side of Deerfield.[22][23] As of 2000, headquarters was still in an unincorporated area in West Deerfield Township. 
 

Store model

Walgreens stores were originally connected to local groceries. In Chicago, their primary market, they teamed up with either Eagle Food Centers or Dominick's Finer Foods, usually with a "walkthru" to the adjoining store and often sharing personnel. This concept was instated to compete with the popular dual store format used by chief competitor Jewel-Osco/Albertsons-Sav-On. They eventually ended the relationship with Eagle and focused primarily on a connection to the Dominick's stores. PharmX-Rexall filled the vacated Walgreen locations joined to Eagle stores.

 

In its 2009 business model, Walgreens are set up as freestanding locations at the corners of intersecting streets, on the prevailing side of the street with the most traffic flow -- figuratively making it a "corner drugstore" similar to how many independent pharmacies evolved. Some locations have a drive-through pharmacy, and over 3000 refill inkjet printer cartridges. 

The store management team usually includes a Store Manager (MGR), an Executive Assistant Manager (EXA), and at least one Assistant Manager (MGT). In 2009, Walgreens introduced the Store Team Lead (STL), or "non-management keyholder", position in many of its stores. In 2012, Walgreens announced that they would be phasing out the MGT, EXA, and STL positions for the Assistant Store Manager-Trainee (ASM-T), Assistant Store Manager (ASM), and Store Floor Leader (SFL) positions, respectively. The new management structure will implement a new structure and payscale that will more closely resemble their competitors to reflect the industry standard.
 

Disability inclusion initiative

In 2002, Walgreens senior vice president of supply chain and logistics Randy Lewis began a program aimed at providing opportunity to the disabled to work side by side with typical workers. The result was the development and opening of two distribution centers whose staff is approximately 40% disabled. The model was so successful that other companies such as Clarks Companies NA, Glaxo Smith Kline, Best Buy, and Costco have either examined it or placed it under consideration. 
 

Related ventures

Walgreens formerly owned Sanborns, one of the largest pharmacy and department store chain in Mexico, having purchased Sanborns from Frank Sanborn in 1946 and selling it to Grupo Carso in 1982. 
 

In the 1980s, Walgreens owned and operated a chain of casual family restaurants named Wag's, an attempt to compete with Woolworth's lunch counters. The Wag's restaurants were very similar in concept to Denny's. Walgreens sold most of these to Marriott Corp. in 1988 and by 1991 the chain had completely gone out of business.
 

Environmental record

In 2006, in efforts to clean the environments of the communities in which Walgreen stores operated, Walgreens teamed up with ImaginIt to bring solar power systems to two distribution centers and 100 stores. This has significantly lowered the amount of electricity supplied from outside sources. The distribution centers and stores in California make 20% to 50% of their own electricity from the solar power system.
 

Walgreens also started testing the prospects of energy saving lighting equipment in its stores. A few of its test stores have used a system of lighting called "dimming/daylight harvesting ballast," created by Axis Technology Group. 
 

The company has also removed arguably harmful air fresheners from its stores, and started selling products made from recycled juice cartons. 
 

In newer stores, Walgreens installed motion sensitive lights in sections of the building. The lights only turn on when someone enters the room. Rooms that have these lights include breakrooms, restrooms, the office, the warehouse/receiving areas, and the pharmacy.
 

Consumer record

As of June 2008, Walgreens "agreed to stop altering prescriptions without physician approval as part of a multi-state agreement to settle allegations of improper billing," reported the Knoxville

News Sentinel: 

Walgreens was accused of switching the dosage forms on three medications commonly prescribed for Medicaid patients without doctor approvals in order to boost profits. This resulted in Medicaid programs nationwide paying much more for the medications than they normally would have, according to a press release by the [Tennessee] attorney general's office. Walgreen Co. agreed to comply with state and federal laws on the matter, plus pay $35 million to the federal government, 42 states and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico.
 

"The compliance agreement will be in effect for five years. Walgreens did not admit liability, as part of the settlement," reported the Chicago Sun-Times. 
 

The Walgreens web site, www.walgreens.com, invited users to write reviews of some OTC products such as vitamins and nutritionals, but did not invite users to write reviews of the corresponding Walgreens-branded products. A recent revision of the Walgreens web site has added the ability to review any product it sells.
 

In March of 2008, Walgreens settled a lawsuit with the EEOC that alleged the company discriminated against African-Americans for $24 million.
 

 The settlement was split between the 10,000 African-American employees of the company. In the agreement, Walgreens avoided any admission of guilt.
 

The decree, one of the largest monetary settlements in a race case by the EEOC, provides for the payment of over $24 million to a class of thousands of African American workers and orders comprehensive injunctive relief designed to improve the company’s promotion and store assignment practices.
 

Also in 2008, Walgreens "agreed to pay $35 million to the U.S., 42 states and Puerto Rico for overcharging state Medicaid programs by filling prescriptions with more expensive dosage forms of ranitidine, a generic form of Zantac and fluoxetine, which is a generic form of Prozac." 
 

In 2009, Walgreens threatened to leave the Medicaid program, the state and federal partnership to provide health insurance coverage to the poor, in Delaware over reimbursement rates. Walgreens was the largest pharmacy chain in the state and the only chain to make such a threat. The state of Delaware and Walgreens reached an agreement on payment rates and the crisis was averted. 
 

In 2010, Walgreens stopped accepting Medicaid in the state of Washington, leaving the state's 1 million Medicaid recipients unable to get their prescriptions filled at the 121 stores in Washington. 

In March of 2011, Walgreens was sued in the state of California by customers for allegedly selling customer's medical information. 
 

According to the suit, brought by Todd Murphy on behalf of his two daughters and the rest of the class, Walgreen sells the prescription information to data mining companies who resell it to pharmaceutical companies for marketing purposes. The practice allows drugmakers to target physicians considered high-volume prescribers and those most willing to prescribe new medications, it said.
 

In 2011, Walgreens announced they would be ending their relationship with Express Scripts, a prescription benefits manager. A coalition of minority groups, led by Reverend Al Sharpton’s National Action Network, sent letters urging Gregory Wasson, CEO of Walgreens, to reconsider. Groups sending letters were National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, the Congress of Racial Equality, Hispanic Leadership Fund and others.
 

Walgreens was named in a lawsuit by the Union Food and Commercial Workers Unions and Employers Midwest Health Benefits Fund in the Northern District Court of Illinois in January 2012. The suit alleges Walgreens and Par Pharmaceuticals violated the RICO Act "at least two widespread schemes to overcharge" for generic drugs." 
 

The lawsuit alleges drugstore chain Walgreen and generic pharmaceutical maker Par established a partnership in which Par manufactured and/or marketed generic versions of antacid Zantac and antidepressant Prozac in dosage forms that weren't subject to private and governmental reimbursement limitations. It further said Walgreen purchased those dosage forms from Par—at a cost substantially higher than the widely prescribed dosage forms—and then "systematically and unlawfully filled its customers' prescriptions with Par's more expensive products, rather than the inexpensive dosage forms that were prescribed by physicians."