After reading Jim Collins’ book « Good to Great, » in which he analyzes 11 companies selected for their incredible performance on the stock market (better than all other companies in their sector), I noticed that Pharmaprix was doing what Walgreens did a few years in the United States. I don’t know if Pharmaprix will be as successful using this strategy, but here’s an excerpt from the book « Good to Great » that will help you better understand what I’m talking about.

« The company embarked on a program of systematic replacement of every poor location by ‘practical’ ones, preferably situated on street corners so that customers can access and leave the store from several directions. If a beautiful location at an intersection was available a few hundred meters from a profitable and well-positioned Walgreens store, the company would still close the store (even if it cost a million dollars) to open a wonderful new outlet situated on a corner… While Walgreens’s stores were only found in cities where its convenience and concentration concept could be applied, we found no trace of a coherent and similar growth concept with its competitor, Eckerd. Negotiators at heart, Eckerd’s leaders were compulsively jumping on buyable stores, without any apparent unifying theme.  »

I invite you to get Jim Collins’ book and continue reading to understand, among other things, this principle based on the concentration of simple strategies that he calls “the concept of the hedgehog.”