With a mission to inform, empower, celebrate and advocate for British Columbia's current and aspiring business leaders, BCBusiness go behind the headlines and bring readers face to face with the key issues and people driving business in B.C.
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BCBusIness.Ca May 2014 BCBusiness 35 itself from the marketer's biggest fear: price. "We run in raging fear trying to get away from that issue of price-point competitiveness because that is some- thing everybody in town can imitate." After department stores killed the general store, London Drugs success- fully revived that mixed-merchandising model, Meredith contends. In an era of retail cost-cutting, he praises it for play- ing a long game by keeping knowledge- able staff : "When you stop doing that, you fall into the deathtrap of Sears." London Drugs has invested in other parts of the business. Queen's profes- sor Wong notes that the company con- stantly experiments with better ways to present its products, working with consultants on things like shelving for- mats. They've also built a substantial e-commerce division that operates from coast to coast. "They understand that if you don't spend that money and invest that time and eff ort, then you're going to look like a Zellers," says Wong. "And we all know what happened to Zellers." Meredith predicts that London Drugs will continue to thrive, in part because it's so good at getting people through the door to check out electron- ics. Once they're in, customers wander the aisles and buy smaller items like pens and candy. "The markups are bet- ter and the turns are real fast," he says. As the competition intensifies— not only from the likes of Shoppers, Walmart and Target, but also dollar stores and online retailers—London Drugs is undoubtedly feeling the pres- sure. Still, the chain's methodical expansion will continue, says Mahlman. "One of our strengths is being very solid financially—having a very long-term view of how we grow." And wherever that growth takes London Drugs, one thing won't change: a laser focus on customer service. Says Mahlman: "A very key belief that we have is our customers are way smarter than we are." London Drugs branches out into one-hour photofi nishing and opens a full-service computer department. It also briefl y sells beer and wine at its North Vancouver store as part of a provincial government experiment. 19 8 0 s London Drugs goes head-to-head with specialty electronics retailers by launching a high-end video and audio department. 19 9 2 19 9 2 19 9 2 London Drugs launches its fi rst website, which lets customers refi ll prescriptions. 2 0 0 0 London Drugs' e-commerce site goes live. 2 0 0 0 The company opens its fi rst locations in Saskatchewan and Manitoba, respectively. 2 0 0 2 2 0 0 4 Now offering free Wi-Fi at all of its stores, London Drugs launches a new Photolab website that lets custom- ers print images from social media. 2 011 B.C.'s m o s t l o v e d B r a n d s after department stores killed the general store, London Drugs successfully revived that mixed-merchandising model, says sFu marketing professor Lindsay Meredith. In an era of retail cost-cutting, he praises it for playing a long game by keeping knowledgeable staff: "When you stop doing that, you fall into the deathtrap of sears" p30-37_BestBrands_may.indd 35 2014-04-09 3:13 PM