Brooks Pharmacy

Brooks Pharmacy

File:Brookpharmacylogo.jpg
Company type	Pharmacy
Founded	1971
Headquarters	Warwick, Rhode Island
Key people	Michel Coutu, President and CEO William Z. Welsh Jr., EVP and COO David Morocco, VP of Marketing
Products	Retail/Pharmacy
Website	http://www.brooksrx.com/

Brooks Pharmacy is a chain of more than 330 pharmacies located throughout New England and New York and has been a well-recognized name in the New England pharmacy industry for several decades.Brooks Pharmacy is currently a unit of the Quebec-based Jean Coutu Group. The corporate headquarters is located in Warwick, Rhode Island. Brooks is slated to be acquired by Rite Aid in early 2007, and in effect, the Brooks trade name, long associated with New England drug retailing, will be soon be retired.

During its heyday during the late 1990s/early 2000s, Brooks was one of the premier regional drug chains in the United States, and was the second largest drug chain in New England, maintaining an especially strong presence in the states of Vermont, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island. In 2002, Brooks was recipient of the the 2002 Rex Awards Regional Chain of the Year [1].

However, Brooks faced many difficulties between 2004 and 2006, as its parent company struggled unsuccesfully to integrate 1,500 Eckerd stores acquired from J.C. Penney with the existing Brooks network, resulting in a steady loss of market share and lagging same store sales as CVS and Walgreens continued to expand and solidify their store base in the New England region.

History

For many years Brooks Pharmacy was a division of the Pawtucket, RI-based Adams Drug Company, along with several other Northeastern drug chains. In 1984, corporate raider Ronald Perelman acquired the Adams Drug chain and opted to convert all of the Adams stores over to the Brooks trade name. For a period of time Brooks was subsidiary of the former Pantry Pride supermarket chain, another firm controlled by Perelman at the time.

Ownership by Hook-SupeRx

Perelman, however, quickly resold Brooks to the now defunct Indiana-based Hook-SupeRx drug chain in 1988. Under the reign of Hook-SupeRx, Brooks assumed a new management team with Gayl W. Doster as COO, William Welsh in charge of operations, David Morocco in charge of purchasing. Doster, Welsh, and Morocco attempted to modernize the store base and turn around what was once a struggling chain.

1994 Acquisitions by Revco and Jean Coutu

In 1994, Revco acquired Brooks as part of its larger purchase of the Hook-SupeRx chain. At the time, the Brooks store base stretched from Maine to Maryland, and Revco had no interest in operating the Brooks outlets in New England, as they considered them outside of their core market. As a result, that same year, Revco sold all of the New England Brooks stores to the Canadian-based Jean Coutu Group, which had already been operating stores under the Maxi Drug trade name in Rhode Island and Massachusetts. The Brooks stores retained by Revco outside of New England later assumed the Revco banner, while subsequently, Jean Coutu rebranded its Maxi stores as Brooks.

Late 1990s/Early 2000s: Growth, Expansion, and Innovation under Coutu

Under the management of Jean Coutu, Brooks was successful for several years, growing and acquiring smaller chains and pieces of larger chains throughout the New England region. In 1995, Brooks acquired Rite Aid's entire Massachusetts store network, and in exchange Brooks sold its entire store base in Maine to Rite Aid, and exited the state. (Ironically, many Brooks stores in Massachusetts will soon return to their original banner) In 1999, Brooks acquired the Burlington, Vermont-based City Drug chain, greatly increasing its market share in the State of Vermont, and re-entering the State of New York for the first time since the 1994 Revco acquisition. Later, in 2001, Brooks purchased all of the New England Osco Drug stores from Albertson's. Shortly after the Osco acquisition, President Michel Coutu made a commitment to significantly increase the size of the chain by the year 2004. This expansion was accomplished in August of 2004 with the acquisition of apprx. 1,539 Eckerd Pharmacies as well as Eckerd's headquarters in Florida.

During the late 1990s and early 2000s, Brooks Pharmacy was also seen as an innovator, being one of the first American chains to bring European derma care skin centers and consultation centers into its stores.

The Downfall of Brooks

By 2005, Coutu had merged the operations of the Brooks and Eckerd chains together at Brooks headquarters in Rhode Island, shuttering the former Eckerd headquarters in Florida. Between 2005 and 2006 Coutu ran into many difficulties integrating the Brooks and Eckerd chains together, and as a result, Coutu's Brooks and Eckerd outlets experienced a significant decline in market share.

On August 23, 2006, the Wall Street Journal annouced that Rite Aid would be buying the Eckerd Pharmacy and Brooks Pharmacy chains from the Quebec-based Jean Coutu Group for US$3.4 billion. Rite Aid announced in the deal that the Brooks name will be retired in favor of the more nationally-known Rite Aid banner.