The Curious Case of Whinemore Pharmacy

Well, here we are yet again with another not so exciting episode of "Lemon Edge Of The".  Before we dive right in, I'd like to direct your constantly diverted attention to another site: 

http://theevolutionofstupidity.blogspot.com/

My friend, (and fellow founding member / bass player for Markov Chain) Jerry The Tool, has been in the insane process of building his own bass guitar.  For those of you who are crafters, wood workers and/or understand the concept of the term "create", you may find his blog interesting/entertaining as he has thoroughly archived the build process of his bass project so far onto the ever-growing annals of the internet.  For those of you interested in his next project, he plans to build a new guitar for yours truly, or as Jerry The Tool would put it - "the best looking/sounding Les Paul style guitar in all of Minnesota"...go Jerry.  ROCK HANDS!

For those of you who have never seen one of our Markov Chain live shows, you may not be aware of how desperate Jerry The Tool is in need of a new/better/smaller bass guitar:

This was a picture taken by a fan during the Justin Bieber Tribute Tour...which began and ended with one show at Dollywood (not really).

Anyway, how about a post?  If you've been to this site recently, you may remember a post about The Future of Pharmacy.  I caught a lot of criticism for that one, both good and bad.  So for that, to all I say, here's another stab at the topic!

You may recall that I work for a company that manages prescription benefits.  This company also has mail order pharmacies that provide maintenance medications to our millions of members.  Well the retail pharmacies don't really like that too much.  In fact, one major chain in particular has been extremely vocal about mail order pharmacies even though they too offer medications through the mail. 

For legality purposes, I will not use their real name...let's just call them Whinemore:

To reiterate my previous statement, Whinemore has been a huge advocate for anti-mail when it comes to prescription medications.  They have even led their Retail Pharmacy Guild (or whatever they are called these days) to lobby in Washington against the use of home delivery.  Over the years, there have been many platforms as to why home delivery should not be a viable option - no patient/pharmacist experience (pop quiz - what is the name of your pharmacist?  I just failed), it's not safe (not true), it's not cost effective (also not true), terrorists will bomb your children's school if you don't go through retail (can't prove, but pretty sure this one is false as well).

There's one major platform over the years that has always stood out to me - mail order is forcing retail pharmacies out of business.  I'm posting the link again in case you'd like to read more as to why that one is totally false, but for the purpose of this post, I will recap (in bullet form):

• There are over 60,000 pharmacies in America today all fighting for your business
• This over-saturated market is so fragile that any contender that tips the scales out of favor of retail will cause this bad business model to fail
• This is the fault of anyone else except for the companies that created the problem in the first place

So with all that said, to sum it up one more time, the overall message is:  "Don't do what we do or there's not enough revenue to go around and you hurt us."  I think you get the point now?

I was shocked (simply shocked!) the other day when I drove past my local Whinemore:

First of all, I highly doubt Twilight was what thespians had in mind when they coined the term "theatre".  Call it what it is and stop trying to add culture to what it's not...it's "theater".  If I'm going to see real people on a real stage acting out a real story, it is a "theatre" and I highly doubt you can buy Sour Patch Kids and Raspberry Slurpees there.  If you go to watch overpaid actors muddle through their lines on screen while they're thinking about which country to purchase their next child from, that would be (you guessed it) "theater"...and yes, they have all the Sour Patch Kids you can eat.  By the way, I know there is no written rule on this dynamic, so feel free to disagree...I don't care.

OK, so going back to the whole "don't do what we do..." concept, see anything wrong with this sign (other than the aforementioned "theatre" debacle)?  The first thing I noticed was the "today only" part as this ad has been up for at least 6 weeks now.  The second, and more pertinent to this post, was the selling of refreshments meant for movie viewing.  Let's acknowledge something - movie theaters make no money on the sale of a movie ticket.  That money goes to the studios, production companies and distributors (a followup to Forrest Gump was in the works until the author of the books was told that the first movie was a financial failure and he refused to do the sequel - a story of greed and betrayal, but interesting nonetheless).  Movie theaters make money on the refreshments they sell to the people that come into their theaters to watch a movie.  How can a company like Whinemore even consider taking money away from another business when their major concern themselves is the exact same problem?  Seems a little double-sided to me...

As I was turning around the car to take a second look, I noticed the other side of the sign:

OK, so not only is Whinemore trying to take business away from movie theaters, but they are also taking business away from local dry cleaners who more than likely can't match the bulk pricing offered by the Whinemore options - less personal, but cheaper.  And let's not even start on the renting of medical equipment...seriously, let's not go there.

So here we have an organization out there trying to "fight the good fight" against other forms of businesses trying to take away their revenue while they too make blatant attempts to take revenue away from other legitimate businesses just trying to contend in the same markets.  No wonder they are losing market share...

I recently saw that Whinemore has even jumped into another new area in an attempt to stay relevant - they have become a whinery:

***See what I did there?***

Ah good old fashion business sense...it's fun isn't it kids?  Anyone?

OK, so maybe I am a little biased against companies like Whinemore who have nothing better to do than to point fingers at anyone but themselves, but let's be smart about what we're saying and what we're doing.  Believe it or not, consistency can go a long way...even if that way is wrong, it can still go far.

Thus ends my latest rant.  Hopefully I don't get another barrage of hate mail telling me I'm dumb...because you're dumb too (you know who you are, dummy). 

With that, I leave you with another round of funny pics to get you through your week:

She used to work for Whinemore...

And this is how I have been feeling lately:

I hope you all enjoy your big, as well as your small, victories each and every day.

-Cheers!