CVS

“Only 8% of leaders are good at both strategy and execution, which means you must discover the sweet spot of knowing yourself, your competitors and your terrain.  The very best win with ‘ideas’ and are obsessed with their front-line customer relationships.”  

That was one of the key messages conveyed by Elevation Forum founder and Mack Elevation leader Dan Mack at the most recent Elevation Form held in Scottsdale, Ariz., on Friday.  

NEW YORK — CVS Health on April 19 officially debuted a new store design to enhance the retail customer experience with a new assortment of healthier food, health-focused products and expanded beauty selections, paired with informational signage throughout the store to help customers discover new offerings. 

The company’s front of store today will clearly not be its front of store tomorrow. According to CVS, combined with its innovative digital programs, these changes represent the “next evolution of the customer experience at CVS Pharmacy.”

WOONSOCKET, R.I. — CVS Pharmacy announced it will remove parabens, phthalates and the most prevalent formaldehyde donors across nearly 600 beauty and personal care products from its store brand CVS Health, Beauty 360, Essence of Beauty, and Blade product lines. The Promise Organic line of store brand products also does not contain any of these ingredients, the company added.

CVS Pharmacy will stop shipping store brand products that don’t meet these standards to distribution centers by the end of 2019. 

NEW YORK — CVS Pharmacy has entered a new arena by adding audio and optical services to its list of in-store offerings. The retailer has opened seven hearing and five optical centers store-within-stores in the Baltimore-Washington, D.C. area, with plans to expand to 50 locations by the end of 2017, Morgan Diaz, senior director, health services division at CVS Health, told Drug Store News.

“This is really exciting,” Diaz (pictured) told DSN. “And this will be [included] with our new store format as well.”

NEW YORK — CVS Pharmacy continues to make a concerted effort to transform its stores, with the goal of fostering a better customer experience.

DALLAS – A national coalition of more than 50 leading U.S. companies known as the 100,000 Opportunities Initiative will come together on May 19 at the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center to host the Dallas Opportunity Fair –  an unprecedented, day-long hiring event aimed at 16-24 year olds who are not in school and unemployed.

PHOENIX — MinuteClinic, the retail medical clinic of CVS Health, is joining forces with the Dept. of Veterans Affairs, the Phoenix VA Health Care System and TriWest Healthcare Alliance for an initiative that will expand access to high quality and convenient health care services for veterans in Phoenix and surrounding communities.

If you could pick only one headline regarding CVS Health over the past year, the conversion of all 1,669 pharmacies and 79 clinics acquired from Target in 2015 to CVS Pharmacy locations would be a good one. To be sure, those efforts are paying off. In the former Target pharmacy locations, script counts are up, CVS Health president and CEO Larry Merlo told analysts during a February earnings call.