Arizona independent focuses on convenience over price

Drug Store News, Feb 20, 1989

Arizona independent focuses on convenience over price

Campus Drugs is more like a 7-Eleven than a drug store, contends owner Morton Spiegel. Convenience is his niche.

In Tempe, the heart of Arizona State, the store vies for prescription business with the campus health center, and H&BA and other category volume with the campus bookstores.

"Students are not price conscious," said Spiegel. "They are more interested in convenience. With the dorms right across the street, we get the traffic and the kids want to zip in and out."

To build traffic further; Spiegel rents the basement of his drug store to a student-owned and operated note-taking service. To get there students must first walk through the store's main level.

At the pharmacy, 25 percent of scripts are birth control pills, which Spiegel said he sells below cost to get as close as he can to prices at the university health center, which buys on a competitive county bid. He induces pharmacy traffic by offering credit and accepting charge cards, which the health center doesn't.

Other popular categories here: alternative greeting cards, school supplies, household cleaning products, posters and picture frames.

Campus Drugs isn't shirking from the competition. "The college bookstores are part of campus life," said Spiegel. "It was their field and if anything we're intruding on their territory." Spiegel appears confident that there is enough business to go around.