Founded 1962, sold to Loblaw for $12.4 billion in 2014

Shoppers Drug Mart

Murray Koffler opened a single Toronto pharmacy in 1962 with a name blended from two other brands. Fifty-two years later, Canada's largest grocery company bought the chain he built in the country's largest-ever retail acquisition.

Shoppers Drug Mart was founded in 1962 by Toronto pharmacist Murray Koffler, who opened a 4,000-square-foot drug store at Shoppers World plaza, at Danforth and Coxwell. The name itself is a blend: "Shoppers" from the plaza, "Mart" borrowed from Loblaws' contemporaneous "Food Mart" branding — an odd bit of trivia given that Loblaw would end up owning Shoppers 52 years later.

The associate-owner model

Koffler's core innovation was the "Associate" concept: independent pharmacists own and operate their individual store while sharing a national brand, supply chain and marketing under Shoppers Drug Mart. It let the company scale nationally while keeping the "your neighbourhood pharmacist" feel.

Imasco, then Loblaw

The chain was sold to Imasco Ltd. in 1978, spun back out as an independent public company in 2001, and ultimately acquired by Loblaw Companies Limited in 2014 for CAD $12.4 billion — folding Koffler's pharmacy chain into the Weston family's grocery empire and making it Canada's largest-ever retail acquisition at the time.

Sources

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