Drugstore.com
The business, the turning points, and the decisions behind them.
01 / WHAT IT BUILT
What the company did
Drugstore.com was an early e-commerce pioneer selling health, beauty, and pharmacy products online. Its web operations launched on February 24, 1999; it went public in the dot-com boom, partnered with Rite Aid for in-store prescription pickup, and acquired SkinStore.com's operator Salu Inc. in 2010. At its 2011 acquisition by Walgreens it had more than 3 million customers and was reportedly the eighth-largest online retailer in the U.S. Walgreens bought the company on March 24, 2011 for about $409 million.
02 / Drugstore.com FAILURE REASONS
Failure factors
Walgreens closed Drugstore.com to concentrate investment on its own online and omnichannel business as part of a cost-reduction strategy.
03 / EVENT HISTORY
Events in the structured record
- Operations ended
Drugstore.com ended operations.
04 / CONTEMPORARY REBUILD ASSESSMENT
Difficulty of rebuilding this project today
Material for this section is being gathered and checked. It will appear here once ready.
Overall assessment: Not completed
05 / CAUSAL CHAIN
How the factors connect
- 01
On July 28, 2016, Walgreens announced it would shut down drugstore.com and Beauty.com by September 30, 2016 to focus on walgreens.com.
- 02
The sites ended their rewards programs on September 30, 2016 and customers were redirected to walgreens.com.
- 03
Walgreens estimated pre-tax charges of approximately $115 million related to the shutdown of both sites.
- 04
Positions at the Bellevue office that only supported drugstore.com and Beauty.com were eliminated, with up to 100 jobs affected.