On a quarterly earnings call, the CEO of Walgreens conceded that putting items behind lock and key has hurt the company’s sales, because no one wants to shop in a store where even the toothpaste is behind glass.
The retail pharmacy chain Walgreens (or rather, its parent company Walgreens Boots Alliance) had its quarterly earnings call on Friday, the day after announcing they were closing 1,200 stores nationwide, including 12 Walgreens stores in San Francisco.
And that earnings call explained why they’re closing so many stores, as Walgreens lost $245 million this quarter, compared to a loss of just $39 million in the same quarter of the previous year.
Walgreens Boots Alliance CEO Tim Wentworth admitted on the call one big reason why their sales have slumped so much over the last year. Wentworth conceded that the stores’ wildly unpopular policy of locking up so many retail items to prevent shoplifting has also significantly hurt Walgreens sales, as CBS News reports.
Walgreens CEO says anti-shoplifting strategy backfired: ‘When you lock things up…you don’t sell as many of them’ https://t.co/W7WQGOfNXo
— philip lewis (@Phil_Lewis_) January 15, 2025
“When you lock things up, for example, you don’t sell as many of them,” Wentworth said, according to a transcript of the call. “We’ve kind of proven that pretty conclusively.”
If only the Walgreens CEO actually shopped at Walgreens. Then maybe he might've known this sooner. https://t.co/D9SceeJOjq
— Tyrone (@TheTyroneP) January 15, 2025
That said, Wentworth did not make any grand announcements about removing the locks in the chain’s ongoing struggle with shoplifting. “I don’t have anything magnificent to share with you today,” he said. “It is a hand-to-hand combat battle still, unfortunately.”
Admitting that locking up store items was a poor choice brings to mind a previous Walgreens CEO admission in January 2023 that “Maybe we cried too much” about shoplifting. Though in fairness, that was a different Walgreens CEO. The CEO who said “Maybe we cried too much” was then-CEO James Kehoe. Tim Wentworth replaced Kehoe as Walgreens CEO in October 2023.
Related: Walgreens Closing 12 SF Stores In Late February, Here’s a Map Showing Which Ones are Closing [SFist]
Image: Rich U via Yelp