Walgreens, also called Walgreen company, is the second-largest drugstore chain in the United States of America. The company is second to CVS Health. Walgreens was established in Chicago, Illinois in 1901. The company merged with Alliance Boots, a Switzerland-based company in December 2014 and formed Walgreen Boots Alliance Inc. 

Background : 

In 1901, started a tiny food store by the side of Bowen and Cottage Grove Road in the region of Chicago. The place was owned by Dixon from Illinois as the native Charles R. In the following years, expanded to several other stores that include four stores by 1913, the fifth store in the year 1915, and added four more stores in about 1916. 

In 1919, about 20 stores were under its chain of business. Walgreens also launched a malted milkshake by the year 1922 and opened a manufacturing plant for producing ice cream. An annual sale of about $ 1,200,000 was recorded from a total of 44 stores that were operational in the middle of 1920. By then, the company also opened stores in different regions like Minnesota, Wisconsin along with Missouri. 

In 1930, Walgreens opened 397 stores and had an annual revenue of about $ 4,000,000. The stock market that witnessed a crash in 1929 and the Great Depression did not harm the business model of Walgreens. Charles Walgreen Sr died in the year 1939 and the business was taken over by their son, Charles Walgreen Jr. Although the period under Charles Walgreen Jr was lucrative, there were no expansions noted for nearly the first part of the century.

Expansion : 

In 1946, Walgreens acquired Sanborns, the largest pharmaceutical Company, and store chain in Mexico from Frank Sanborn. Later in around 1982, Sanborn was sold to a company called Grupo Carso. At the beginning of 1950, Charles ‘Cork’ R. Walgreen took the duties from Charles Walgreen Jr. During this time, the company was modernized with the introduction of barcode scanning.

 Walgreens also acquired Global Discount City, which is a big box outlet from the United Mercantile Inc, and opened bigger spaced stores. After several acquisitions and management transitions, Kevin P. Walgreen was made the vice president in 1995 and was later promoted to the position of senior vice president in the year 2006. 

In 2006, Walgreens bought Harry’s Chain from the region of Delaware, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and also New Jersey. During the year 2009, Gregory Wasson was named the chief executive officer of Walgreens, effective from the 1st of February. its expansion strategy and acquired Duane Reade for about $ 1.075 billion, including the debt. 

This New York chain of business still did business in some of their stores with the Duane Reade name on it. In the month of March 2011, Walgreens bought Drugstor.com for about $ 409 million. The company also paid about $ 6.7 billion for 45 % interest in their merger company, Alliance Boots. 

The same year, Walgreens acquired companies like USA Drug, Super D Drug, Med X, and many others. In 2013, Walgreens also bought Kerr Drug and in 2014, Walgreen acquired the remaining 55% of Alliance Boots. Then the pharma company was named the Walgreens Boots Alliance headquartered in Chicago. In the same year, Walgreens bought Farmacias Benavides.

The corporate hub for Walgreens had its technology center located in Chicago starting from 2010. On the other side, the company had their headquarters in Deerfield, Illinois. During the summer of 2014, Walgreens settled to relocate a corporate operation program to Switzerland. Although for a few, this came as a form of tax inversion, Walgreens considered this step as a part of the merger with Alliance Boots. Later in August 2014, the company decided not to relocate the headquarters.

Key Takeaways : 

In August 31 of 2019, reports suggest that Walgreens operated about 9,277 stores in the United States of America. In 2009, Walgreens had corner stores freestanding on streets with the most amount of traffic. The business model was popularly related as “corner drugstore”.

Walgreens stands as a pharmacy giant in the United States and has created a business strategy that is about 121 years old. They have adapted to the changing times and have upskilled their company, which has allowed Walgreens to acquire and grow. It is definitely something to note that businesses do require careful supervision and Business Outreach Magazine wants to indicate that with constant learning, professional and personal growth is imperative in today’s age.