The distribution center was among three and 1,932 stores Walgreen's acquired from Walgreen's in 2017. It opened in 2016.
Further reading
- "Walgreens to close Spartanburg’s Rite Aid distribution center." Spartanburg Herald-Journal. 2019-07-19.
Seems that makes sense to avoid unneeded duplication in the area. One might also suspect that Walgreens has some extra space in their centers to handle larger numbers of stores, based on their shrinking of the variety of items in the stores over the recent years (those "blank spaces" in aisles filled with display posters rather than actual merchandise, the removal of end caps in many places etc.).Knight wrote: ↑July 19th, 2019, 11:35 pm Walgreen's is closing Rite Aid's distribution center in Spartanburg County, South Carolina. Operations will transfer to Walgreen's distribution center in Anderson County, South Carolina.
The distribution center was among three and 1,932 stores Walgreen's acquired from Walgreen's in 2017. It opened in 2016.
Further reading
- "Walgreens to close Spartanburg’s Rite Aid distribution center." Spartanburg Herald-Journal. 2019-07-19.
The objective of the simple stores was to make them... simple. Low stock, lower labor, fewer price changes, no backstock whatsoever. Basically kill the volume in the already low volume stores and operate them with as low of a cost structure as possible. Adding merchandise to those empty spaces takes time and effort of staff to merchandise, order extra product, etc. and goes against the concept Walgreens was going for with those stores.
I have wondered if Walgreens would de-simplify some of those stores if conditions warranted it. Conditions you describe seem to me like they would warrant it (consolidating a larger Rite Aid into a simple store).BillyGr wrote: ↑August 4th, 2019, 3:53 pm What is also interesting is that while they "shrunk" those stores, in one location here they bought an existing Rite Aid (that began as an Eckerd) and remodeled that store, then closed their own existing Walgreens location.
What makes it more interesting is that this particular Walgreens was a smaller store to begin with (and not that old, but just built smaller). It had aisles without the middle break that most of their stores have and just generally was a bit smaller footprint overall.
While across the river, they also bought the existing Rite Aid (one of their standard freestanding stores of the pre-Wellness model) and then closed that one, keeping the existing more standard Walgreens across the street open (and I think they had done the "simplify" treatment on that one).
So in one spot they are shrinking the store (or at least the variety of items in it) while the other they are closing a store that started out shrunken and remodeling the taken over store (which is larger) instead. Hmm....