Retailer a community leader

Chain Drug Review, April 23, 2001

NORTH YORK, Ontario -- One characteristic of Shoppers Drug Mart (SDM) that chairman and chief executive officer David Bloom, who plans to step down in July, says he is sure will not change under new leadership is its commitment to the community, something that has become thoroughly ingrained in the corporate culture.

During Bloom's term of office -- and before that under SDM founder Murray Koffler, who initiated the pattern -- the drug chain has donated many millions of dollars to worthwhile causes, the majority, but by no means all, being health related.

Bloom touches on just three of the company's current areas of particular interest, singled out from a much larger list.

Money raised by SDM contributed to part of the funding of a pilot study at the University of Alberta whose results became known as the "Edmonton Protocol" and which were described in the June 6, 2000, edition of The New England Journal of Medicine. James Shapiro and his colleagues at the university developed a new technique for islet transplantation, which may become important in the treatment of diabetes.

The results of the pilot were sufficiently encouraging that the Immune Tolerance Network is organizing an expanded study in which Shapiro and his colleagues will cooperate over an 18-month period with investigators from seven other institutions around the world.

SDM will continue to raise money for juvenile diabetes, which will help with expanded trials in Edmonton and other research projects.

In support of a program organized the National Association of Chain Drug Stores in the U.S. to raise funds for research into colorectal cancer, SDM linked its own fund-raising efforts with two Canadian-born celebrities, Shania Twain, the popular singer, and Darryl Sittler, the star hockey player.

The company committed to raise $400,000 (Canadian) through its stores in a four-week period, and by the end of March it exceeded that by raising $418,000.

This year SDM is again sponsoring its Walk for the Cure event, a tried-and-true recipe for raising an astonishing amount of money in a very short time to support the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation of Canada. This year there are to be "walks" in 36 cities and towns, and the goal is to raise $7 million. In 2000 the Shoppers Walk for the Cure raised $6 million, and Bloom is confident it will reach its objectives again this year.