Everett location likely to survive the cut
By Josh Resnek
CVS, the nation’s monument to giant pharmacies, will be closing 900 of its least successful and mostly older locations to streamline the company as it comes to terms with a brave new world in health care.
The announcement made last week by CVS claimed that changing “consumer buying patterns” are the cause of the coming shutdowns.
The chain operates one store in Everett at the Gateway Mall.
The Everett CVS is modern and up to date in every way, meeting the CVS criteria for retention.
The CVS manager of the store refused to comment. Corporate headquarters had no comments, either.
The list of locations to be shut down will begin next spring.
However, the company did not release the list.
Company spokespersons told the investment community last week that when a store is shutdown, employees will be offered positions at other locations nearby that will remain open.
This comes as reassuring to employees of the Everett store, none of whom wished to comment on the possibility of its closure.
CVS is a large employer with a sizable footprint at the Gateway Shopping Center location. A corporate healthcare analyst told the Leader Herald that most modern, large CVS locations stock about $10 million worth of prescription drugs and over the counter drug products in their pharmacies.
Much of the profits are in the sale of the prescriptions.
CVS and Walgreens have been impacted by consumers buying their drugs online and delivered through the mail at huge cost reductions and savings.
Also, both chains have come to stock enormous amounts of consumer goods, food, candy, greeting cards, and other products handy to consumers shopping inside their stores.
During the pandemic, and for several years before, CVS pharmacies provided flu shots.
Now the pharmacies are providing booster shots protecting against the COVID-19 virus.
“We remain focused on the competitive advantage provided by our presence in thousands of communities across the country, which complements our rapidly expanding digital presence,” said CVS CEO Karen Lynch. She joined the company a year ago.
Neil Saunders, retail industry analyst and managing director of GlobalData, said in a note to investors that the closures are the result of CVS having “too many overlapping locations” and the dilapidated state of its stores that has “pushed some of them into the downward spiral of irrelevance.” “Too many stores are stuck in the past with bad lighting, depressing interiors, messy merchandising, and a weak assortment of products. They are not destinations or places where people go out of anything other than necessity,” Saunders said. CVS shares are up nearly 40% for the year.