Global Walgreen-ing

Whatever is the world coming to but the Walgreen-ing of the global mass market retail drug store distribution channel.

Global OTC manufacturers need to start thinking hard and smart about playing with global retail chain drug stores. The death knell of decline is starting to sound for independent pharmacies, and, when you couple this change in the retail distribution channel with General Sales Ledger (GSL) and Pharmacy (P) brands that provide consumers with easier access, you can start to count on

· Improved public health benefits

· Lower prices

· Great business opportunities

Nicholas Hall is a very smart and astute observer of consumer healthcare and the retail pharmacy.

Here are four data points from his latest OTC newsflash:

1. According to local press reports, the Spanish government risks being taken to the European Court in the next couple of months, in a move to change its pharmacy model to reflect EU legislation guaranteeing the freedom to set up European-wide businesses.

2. Meanwhile, a report by Dutch audit company Ecorys and the University of Maastricht, defending liberalization and deregulation, concludes that the elimination of all rules that regulate pharmacies would provide significant economic savings. The report suggests deregulation of pharmacies could improve their productivity by one-third and reduce prices by 30-40%.

3. In Japan, Drugstore chains Welcia, which has 95 stores in Shizuoka and Kanagawa, and Tokyo-based Takada are in talks to merge later this year. The merger will create Japan's ninth-largest drugstore chain, with sales of about Y130bn (US$1.2bn) and around 395 stores.

4. Speaking at a retail sector conference this week, Alliance Boots executive chairman Stefano Pessina announced that the roll-out of the Boots name in Europe. Although the Boots brand is very powerful in the UK and known elsewhere, it has not been exploited advantageously in international markets. Pessina said the brand will be developed in Europe over time, starting with Norway, where 7 of its Alliance Apotek pharmacies have been rebranded under the Boots the Chemist format, with all 125 Norwegian stores set to follow suit.

This man knows what he sees.

Now it is up to OTC manufacturers to also see these beacons of change and convert them into cogent sales, branding and distribution strategies. The pain of Wal-Mart has already been well felt in the US. Similar distribution and pricing are emerging in Europe, while, similar opportunities loom large in emerging markets like China (viz. Nep-Star) and India. The challenge will be capitalizing on this emerging wave of drug store capitalism.

Life-Profiles: The Patient Is Waiting

All of us are so similar in our differences.

It’s the Jordache, L.L. Bean, Gap, Gloria Vanderbilt, Calvin Klein and, of course, Humanity approach.

In the Wall Street Journal, Robert Lee Hotz neatly summarizes the impact and non-impact of variations in our DNA.

The Max Planck Institute reported that any one of 11 variations in a single gene can make it harder for common anti-depressants to adjust serotonin.

The University of Alabama reports that any one of 9 variations in another gene can double the risk of lupus.

The US, China and the UK have jointly launched the 1000 Genomes Project in which scientists will exhaustively detail the DNA of 1000 people from around the world, producing 60 times as much genetic detail in the three years than all of that produced in the previous 25 years.

In her book, The Human Condition, Hannah Arendt defines vita active (active life) as composed of labor, work and action in the political, social, public and private worlds.

In his book, The Human Comedy, William Saroyan illustrates how the grounded-ness of a well-rounded human support system of Homer Macauley enables him to live a full and fulfilled life

With all this data about who we intrinsically are, physically, socially and spiritually, the challenge remains on understanding and developing pills, products and ideas to continue to help us survive and thrive.

At SmartAnalyst, we are evolving an approach called Life-Profiles ™ where we can combine the best of consumer/patient, scientific and commercial research to provide pharmaceutical and consumer healthcare companies with an understanding of their ultimate target, us.

At Warner-Lambert, we used to have a saying that The Patient Is Waiting. The world is waiting for help with better vaccines, better courses of therapy and better care.

Understanding the complexities of genes and psychologies is so critical to this success that Life-Profiles is designed to help shine a light on who we are, creating a real blend of both scientific and psychological insight.

In his The Actor’s Studio, Lee Strasberg refined and taught method acting as way in which actors would recall real, personal emotions to help them get inside the personalities of their characters.

Life-Profiles is all about getting inside the life of our patients, both physically and emotionally. That is our motivation.

Thinking Your Way Through A Recession

Sorry for not posting sooner, but I have been working in India for the last couple of weeks and am just catching up.

Last week I saw that Barnes & Noble Inc warned of "recessionary pressures" and estimated that 2008 earnings would be well below Wall Street estimates.

As reported in Reuters, the world's largest book retailer already faced a high sales hurdle in comparison with a boost last year from the last Harry Potter book. The company said it had a weak holiday season despite generous discounts aimed at cash-strapped consumers. Also, Barnes & Noble saw its share of the music business pressured by online offerings like iTunes.

Okay, so clearly no one has a monopoly on knowledge, but think about the damage if a recession can make stagger your acquisition of knowledge because you can’t afford books.

But Barnes & Noble is more than just books. It is music, magazines, Starbucks coffee, calendars, and knick-knacks. B&N is also an easy of source for gift-carding when your knowledge of the recipient exceeds your capacity to think of a gift and you desperately hope that the person you are buying a gift for knows how to read. Given this recessionary pressures, reading and amusement are going down the tubes.

But look what Americans have learned in the last six months: Continual growth and investment in home equity is no sure thing and “Guaranteed” as-good-as-cash investments are subject to auctions.

What we learned is that we live in an “e-bay” world, where everything is an auction and you are either a buyer or a seller – and you always need a partner. These partners assign a certain value to your asset, and it may not be a value you like. This is the efficiency of markets coming home to roost.

To quote the sagacious Yogi Berra, it is déjà vous all over again. It is tulipomania all over again, from the passion for buying and selling tulips bulb in 17^th century Holland. A good tulip bulb could cost thousand times the average Dutch salary.

More recently we had internet stocks. Now we have something even more pernicious, the roof over your head, the foundation and the driver for much of recent US economic growth.

I love Anthony Powell, and, in his twelve-novel sequence called A Dance to the Music of Time, his tenth novel is called Books Do Furnish A Room. Now, according to Barnes and Noble, it looks like our shelves will be as a thread-bare as our home investments. If we don’t learn from the lessons of history, we are doomed to repeat them. Okay, for ten points and your next best investment, who said that?