Rite Aid prototype posts dramatic sales gains

Drug Store News, Oct 20, 1997 by Lisa I. Fried

CAMP HILL, Pa. -- What makes a prototype successful? Most retailers would tell you that a prototype works if sales grow higher than they did before.

Rite Aid, winner of the REX award for design format, has certainly proven that with its 10,752-square-foot prototype. Rite Aid's 250-plus, free-standing prototype stores are generating annual revenues of $3.2 million, compared to $2.1 million for its traditional stores.

What is so special about these stores to push sales up that much? They have been designed to make it easier for consumers to make it easier for consumers to understand and find front-end merchandise.

Typically, when a customer walks into a drug store, he or she tries to find the fastest way back to the pharmacy. In a Rite Aid prototype store, a customer can't clearly see the pharmacy from the front of the store.

What he or she does see is a series of carefully carved out shops within a shop. There's a beauty shop, a seasonal shop, a photo shop, a food shop and an OTC shop. Signage over the departments is clear, enticing in its appearance and conveys the feeling of movement.

Rite Aid broke up its stores this way to connect customers more closely with front-end merchandise, according to Beth Kaplan, executive vice president of marketing. "We wanted to make a very strong merchandise presentation ... and invite people to shop the store," she said.

Once inside the shops, customers will quickly find hot-selling merchandise displayed upfront. For example, when a woman walks into the beauty shop, hair color, the fastest-growing HBA category, is one of the first categories she sees.

Within the OTC department in some of the prototype stores is a dramatic Natural Health Center that calls attention to the growing category of herbal and homeopathic remedies.

By the end of its fiscal year, Rite Aid will build more than 1,000 of these larger-format stores. Roughly two-thirds of them will be relocations or expansion of existing stores.