Well Pharmacy
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| Subsidiary undertaking | |
| Industry | Retail Pharmaceuticals Healthcare Beauty Community Healthcare |
| Headquarters | Manchester, United Kingdom |
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Key people
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John Nuttall, Chief Executive Officer
Tim Davies Chief Operating Officer Tony Smith Chief Financial Officer |
| Products | Community Pharmacy |
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Number of employees
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Circa 7000 |
| Parent | Bestway Group |
| Subsidiaries | Bestway Medhub |
| Slogan | Here for your wellbeing |
| Website | well |
Well Pharmacy, formerly The Co-operative Pharmacy, is the largest independent pharmacy business and the third largest overall pharmacy chain after Boots and Lloyds Pharmacy (except in Wales, where Well is the biggest pharmacy chain overall) in the United Kingdom.
In February 2014, after suffering a £2.5bn loss for 2013, The Co-operative Group announced that it was to start exploring options to sell their pharmacy business along with other businesses in their portfolio.
Following months of speculation, The Co-operative Group revealed in July 2014, that they had come to an agreement to divest the pharmacy business to the Bestway Group for £620 million. The sale was completed in October 2014 and Bestway were given a licence to continue using the Co-operative brand for 12 months.
On February 10, 2015 during an event held in Birmingham, it was announced that ‘Well’ would become the new brand for the pharmacy business and that all 780 branches would have all reference to their former identity ‘The Co-operative Pharmacy’, removed and replaced with ‘Well’ by the end of October, 2015.
History
1945-2015
The National Co-operative Chemists (NCC), which later traded as the Co-operative Pharmacy, was established in 1945, at a time when the then Labour government was discussing setting up the National Health Service. With the creation of the NHS in 1948, the CWS, as well as independent retail societies, realised that they needed to offer new services.
Although some of the larger societies had already established chemists as specially registered societies, there were many areas that had no co-operative pharmacies. Once the NCC was formed, various retail societies expressed interest for the NCC to open branches in their trading area.
By 1946 the NCC had opened ten branches in the Manchester area, one in Newcastle and four in the Cardiff area. Another 33 branches were opened over the following 11 years.
The number of NCC branches fell from 112 in 1968 to 76 in 1976. The decline led to a programme of branch modernisation in 1971. The recovery was fast and the number of branches began to rise again in the late 1970s, with an expansion of a much greater scale in the 1980s when the number of branches reached 152 by 1985, with a turnover of £22.6m. In 1985, the NCC was the first co-operative to make use of computerised management information systems.
By 2014, the Co-operative pharmacy operated almost 800 branches all over the UK, they were the third largest pharmacy business (the largest in Wales) and were dispensing more than 70 million prescriptions per year.
2015 - Present (Becoming Well)
‘Well’ was announced as the new brand for the Co-operative Pharmacy by Bestway in February 2015. The brand was unveiled along with the statement that all 780 Co-operative Pharmacy stores in Britain, would be relaunched under the new brand.
At the launch event held to celebrate the unveiling of the new brand, the family-owned Bestway, which controls the chain of Best-one convenience stores, outlined their plans to invest £200m into revamping the business earmarking £40m a year for recruitment, refurbishing pharmacies, expanding the pharmacy’s range of health services, and building a wholesale business. Their ulimate aims is to grow Well’s annual revenues from £750m to £1bn by 2019.
John Nuttall, chief executive of Well, said: "Community pharmacies can play a key role in easing the increasingly unsustainable pressures faced by frontline NHS services, beyond simply providing prescriptions.
"Bestway Group's major investment will not only create new jobs, it will also enable the business to develop the role of the pharmacy team to provide personalised healthcare and deliver an excellent patient experience, improving health and reducing health inequalities in local communities in the process."
Zameer Choudrey, the boss of Bestway added: "We have pledged to give Well strong support by committing to invest £200m over the next five years to help develop and grow the business, and to make sure Well continues to serve its customers and local communities to the high standard the business has always delivered."
The newly formed ‘Well Pharmacy’ began to rebrand their branches in March 2015. With almost 800 legacy Co-op branches to change over to the new identity, the organisation moved quickly to rebrand their estate, before the expiry of their brand licence from the Co-operative group.
The first ‘Well’ Pharmacy was trialled Reddish Road in Cheshire.
The rebrand was treated as a celebration throughout the company, most branches held charity fundraisers and marked the occasion by honouring members of the local communities for achievements.
Between March and October 2015 the rebrand progressed at an impressive scale, working with brand rollout partner ‘Futurama Designs’ they rebranded circa 800 branches, the Healthcare service centre and all of the company’s fleet vehicles in 7 months.
CEO John Nuttall praised the efforts of the colleagues in the business who supported the impressive project stating “when we rebranded our first branch, I said that this was an opportunity to begin again, to reset the compass and to define ourselves and be better. Over the last few months I believe we’ve done that. I’ve been overwhelmed by everyone’s support within the organisation, and that of our customers, and I want to personally thank them all for your commitment to our brand and to our business”.
References
http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/business/well-new-name-co-ops-pharmacies-8607701
External links
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to The Co-operative Pharmacy. |
