With more than a dozen online retail stores, as well as record revenue and customer growth, Drugstore.com wasn’t just successful, it was expanding before its sale to Walgreens in June 2011.
This growth was due, in large part, to the vision of Dawn Lapore, who had served as president, CEO and chairman of the board of Drugstore.com after leaving Charles Schwab, where she had been CIO and helped direct the brokerage house’s online efforts.
This strong technological background was a key asset when Lapore joined Drugstore.com. She believes applying technology to business problems not only benefits a business, but empowers its customers. Customer care and feedback have been major drivers of the Web site’s development, and helped lay the foundation for the $409 million sale to the drug store giant.
Smart Business sat down with Lapore to talk about how she did it.
How do you identify opportunities for growth?
You identify opportunities for growth by listening to your customers, and that’s what we have continued to do. It’s adding a lot more selections… (Customers) will come on our site and search for something that we don’t have and if they do, we watch that and we go get those products. We also allow them to tell us what products they’d like us to carry.
We also listen to the way they want to shop. We had our Drugstore.com site, and that has a wide range of products. But some customers like to shop in a smaller environment for specific type products. For instance, some people just wanted natural products, so we created the Natural Store.
How important are metrics to running a business?
Metrics are critical. What’s wonderful about running an Internet company is we have so much data, so we can see what customers are doing: what they put in their basket, what they put in their basket and then take out, how they maneuver through the site. It gives a wonderful insight into how they’re shopping and how they want to shop.
How do you track different shopping components to expand, and yet remain true to your core competencies and complement them when customers shop outside?
What you have to do is think about who you are and what you’re good at. In fact, when I joined the company … we were trying to be all things to all people. We took a step back and said, “OK. What are we good at?” … We’re very good at Internet marketing, merchandizing, fulfillment, customer care. So we looked at those core competencies and said “How can we build on those? How can we grow while staying true to who we are?”
How much training did you put into customer service to make sure that every experience with Drugstore.com was a positive one?
We did a lot of training. We hired very bright people within our customer care organization and they shop the site constantly. They really understand the business, they care about customers. … That you can’t train in, that you have to hire.
What was your experience helping launch and build the Charles Schwab Corporation’s online business like, and how you were able to translate that?
It was very interesting. I’ve always been involved in technology, and I’ve loved taking technology and applying it to business problems. … When the Internet came along it was so clear, even in the early years, we were just scratching the surface of what the Internet could do. … It was so wonderful to be able to give consumers or customers access to trading, to their account information, to really empower customers. That’s really what Schwab was all about, so it really fit in very well.
What should organizations that are involved with online ventures do to stay ahead of the curve so that they don’t become obsolete?
Continue to evolve. Every single person must look at how to maintain relevancy. “How do I get better this year than I was last year? How do we do things faster, better, cheaper? What are all the innovations out there in technology that we can bear to serve our customers and delight them?”
How to reach: Drugstore.com, www.drugstore.com
