Company success always on the line

Drug Store News, Nov 19, 1990 by Bruce Buckley

Company success always on the line

Fall is a good time for me: I like the colors, the smell of wood smoke and, perhaps most of all, football. But football gets boring sometimes. Then, even the spectacular pass or the slashing run seem to blend with all the others witnessed over the years. When that mood settles in, I should turn off the set and go out for a walk. But I don't, couch potato that I am in the fall. I watch the line play.

Try it sometime. It's not easy. The ball draws the eye like a magnet. But hold your focus on the line, and you'll see where the game outcome is really decided. Strength, speed and agility are important, but gut determination and pride are what count in the end.

If there's a parallel for retailing here it's that winning depends not so much on the top execs - the quarterbacks, etc. - as on the unsung people in the stores, headquarters and distribution centers. Competing effectively depends on the accumulation of all the dozens of little things they do every day, most of which go unnoticed by their bosses.

Then why do they do it? Well, a cynic would say money and job security. But that's bull. Mostly it's pride and involvement - that special feeling of making a difference, even in a small way, in a successful enterprise.

The parallel between line play on the football field and line play in the retail drug industry is particularly apt for this current issue, which reveals the winners of the 1990 Drug Store News REX Awards. It is six years since we presented our first awards for retail excellence in the crowded ballroom of the Omni Park Central Hotel in New York.

From the winner of that first REX chain award - Walgreens - to the 1990 chain honorees, Phar-Mor and Kerr Drug, the not-so-secret success ingredient has been the largely invisible people on the line.

So, in this column, rather than laud Banks and Johnny Kerr or Mickey Monus for their companies' well-deserved awards ... I'd like to toast their players in the trenches. And if it doesn't sound too much like a beer commercial, here's to them.

Once again I invite you to use the services of Drug Store News JOBFAX. This free, confidential employment exchange is designed to bring together executives looking for positions with potential employers in the industry. So if you're out in the cold because of consolidation or retrenchment and are trying to line up new opportunities, drop us a line.

We need a 30- to 35-word ad highlighting your experience, strengths and needs. We'll supply the blind box number and send out your ad along with others in our next edition of Drug Store News JOBFAX.

Write: Drug Store News JOBFAX, Confidential Box 100, 425 Park Ave., New York, N. Y. 10022, or give me a call at (212) 371-9400, x 267.