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| Today's post highlights Hardeman County, TN, retail. |
Fred's is (was) an intriguing company, at times. It surprised us in the past with Fred's Closeout Bonanza, Fred's Discount Depot (see also here), EntrustRx (its specialty pharmacy arm), and its franchise operations. Just last week I shared with you how it has even risen from the dead -- its intellectual property, that is, in the form of Fred's Discount Outlet, a two-store chain up in Ohio (although that's beside the point).
In addition to all of those, Fred's also briefly operated two totally separate subsidiary chains. Today's post takes a look at them both, beginning with the more successful of the two: Getwell Drug & Dollar.
Getwell Drug & Dollar was born in 2012, created as a vehicle for Fred's to target smaller markets. 2012 was the year the company hit its peak, having experienced increasing success and growth up to that point, so it made sense for them to be experimenting with some new store formats. As the below excerpts from a September 2012 Memphis Business Journal article explain, Getwell Drug & Dollar took the typical Fred's square footage, 16,000 sf, and halved it:
Fred's Inc. is testing a new store concept that could allow it to go places it hasn't before.
The Memphis-based discount general merchandise retailer has opened its first Getwell Drug & Dollar in Middleton, Tenn., about 80 miles east of Memphis.
"It's starting out as a test," Jerry A. Shore, executive vice president and CFO, says. "It potentially gives us an opportunity to grow in areas which we didn't in the past."
The Middleton store is 8,000 square feet and focuses primarily on its pharmacy, which is located at the front of the store and has a drive-through window. The prototype also sells a variety of merchandise, including pet supplies, cleaning products, and grocery items.
Shawn Massey, partner with The Shopping Center Group LLC, sees the Getwell Drug & Dollar concept as a strategy that harkens back to Fred's earlier growth patterns.
"Fred's has always had an identity crisis," Massey says. "They didn't know if they were a dollar store, a variety store, a drug store, or a convenience store."
That said, Fred's experienced solid growth because when the company grew, it went into smaller towns where Wal-Mart Stores Inc. would not go.
"If a town didn't have a Wal-Mart, they would go there and be the Wal-Mart for that town," Massey says.
With the Getwell Drug & Dollar concept being half the size of an average Fred's, the company is taking that strategy to a smaller scale.
[Additionally, the city of Middleton is] "a better-than-average small town from a strategic perspective," Massey says.
The city's trade area includes 4,000 to 5,000 people. Its residents likely are patrons of Wal-Mart stores in Bolivar, Collierville, or Selmer.
"Middleton sits right in the middle of the market and makes all the sense in the world," Massey says. "The stuff they sell inside is going to be very similar to Family Dollar or Dollar General that are in 8,000 to 9,000 square feet, but they have the prescriptions, which really drives traffic to them."
Additional articles further elaborated on the concept. In a November 2012 Drug Store News article, Fred's CEO Bruce Efird said of Getwell Drug & Dollar, "The thesis behind it is to drive a growth vehicle in the future for smaller communities where we have either an Xpress Pharmacy or an opportunity to buy a pharmacy, and the community's not large enough to support the 16,000 square foot Fred's store. We're nine weeks into this. What we've seen thus far, we're pleased with the overall performance of the total combination of general merchandise and pharmacy." The author of the article then noted, "The smaller footprint will serve as Fred's growth engine going forward."
Another Drug Store News article, this one from February 2013, discussed the pharmacy-centric Getwell concept in closer detail. "Fred's Super Dollar is piloting a new store concept called Getwell Drug & Dollar that features a heavy focus on pharmacy, OTC, and value-oriented convenience basics. [The stores] will field some 7,500 front-end SKUs, 30% of which will be comprised of health-and-wellness items. While the store may be smaller, Fred's has actually expanded its assortment across several nonprescription categories, including analgesics, first aid, digestives and vitamins, minerals, and supplements. And there will be no tobacco sold in the store, though a full line of e-cigarettes will be on display."
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| Courtesy Behance |
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| Courtesy Behance |
The Getwell Drug & Dollar brand was developed "from the ground-up," meaning that it was created entirely fresh, not relying on any existing applications or retired trademarks, etc. Greg Wilson was the creative director for Fred's Inc. at the time, and his creative portfolio online showcases his work on the Getwell Drug & Dollar brand. Above, you can see a page from the brand identity styleguide, explaining the significance of all aspects of the Getwell logo. Additionally, as you can see below, Getwell was made very independent from Fred's: while its stores did carry some Fred's-brand products, it also had its own store brand ("Get," an acronym for "Good Every Time") and rewards program ("Getmore Rewards").
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| Courtesy Behance |
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| Courtesy Internet Archive |
Clearly, the brand was very invested in in applying both the "Get" and "well" concepts of its identity to as many facets of the business as it could. In the renderings and actual store photos below, you'll see that the walls consisted of slogans such as "Play well," "Eat well," "Feel well," and "Save well." These phrases were also repeated on in-store shelf signage, promotions, and advertisements. The entrance signs read "Wellcome" (with two "L"s), and the pharmacies in particular encouraged customers to follow certain practices, such as daily physical activity, so that they may continue to "Live well."
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| Courtesy Behance |
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| Image source unknown |
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| Courtesy Drug Store News |
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| Courtesy Behance |
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| Courtesy Behance |
Personally, I am very much a fan of the Getwell branding. The way the stores adopted it in every possible element of their identities feels very smooth, smart, and cohesive, in my opinion. It's a simple name that lends itself remarkably well (see what I did there?) to this type of business. And while I can't find any concrete proof of this online, I like to think that the name was rather simply inspired by the Memphis street on which Fred's had its longtime headquarters: Getwell Road.
(Fun fact, Getwell Road actually began life as Shotwell Road. But when a new US Army veteran's hospital opened on the road in 1943, a call to change the name so as to boost the morale of the wounded servicemen arriving at the hospital daily was answered with the swap to Getwell. Smart choice.)
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| Courtesy Randall Commercial Group |
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| Courtesy Behance |
Besides the rather obvious interior differences, Getwell Drug & Dollar's exteriors, too, differed from those of parent Fred's stores. As you can see above, the orientation of the buildings placed the entrances on a corner, much like any other Walgreens, CVS, or Rite Aid pharmacy building you'll encounter. The pharmacy drive-thru window was located on the side, and the construction materials seemed to be mostly siding-based, as opposed to the concrete block or brick of a regular Fred's. The color scheme, too, shifted from Fred's blue and green to Getwell's purple, along with a brown color to mark the main entryway (something that evidently had been changed in the time since the original artist's rendering shown in the top image of the above duo. Note also in that rendering that it appears as if one of the three figures in the logo is joined by a speech balloon with a heart shape in it, another element which was later dropped as the brand identity was refined).
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| Courtesy Internet Archive |
Getwell Drug & Dollar was initially piloted in four test markets in 2012 -- two opened in the third quarter, and two more in the fourth quarter -- with an additional two locations opening in 2013, bringing the total number of stores to six. Unfortunately, the chain never grew beyond these six locations, and the brand was ultimately retired in April 2018, as noted on the sunset message shown above, which was posted to the homepage of its website, getwelldrug.com.
But on the bright side, five of the six locations survived even past the Getwell brand's retirement -- simply transitioning to regular Fred's stores, only without any signage changes -- and operated well into 2019, closing alongside the rest of the Fred's stores throughout the year. We'll touch on each of the six Getwell Drug & Dollar locations before the conclusion of this post, but we'll begin with a full store tour of the Middleton location -- Getwell's first -- as it conducted its liquidation sale.
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The Middleton, TN, Getwell Drug & Dollar was selected for liquidation in the June 2019 round of Fred's closures, meaning it would ultimately end up closing just shy of its sixth anniversary, having opened on or around August 23, 2012. I visited the store (incidentally) one month prior to that anniversary date, on July 23, 2019. Since the liquidation had been announced on June 21st, I expected the store to be quite close to its final day, and in fact was very worried it may have already closed. Thankfully, upon our arrival, I found it was still there and ready for its close-up. No way I could pass up an opportunity to bring this polished and clever, but relatively obscure, Fred's concept to the blog!
If this store's exterior looks identical to the sourced image I showed y'all previously, that's because it is: the sourced images are all of the Middleton location, for as I said, Middleton was home to the very first Getwell Drug & Dollar prototype. You'll see that the interior is identical to those images as well. That said, though, I don't believe any of the other following Getwell locations differed very much in design or appearance from this Middleton store.
Note from the presence of the "total inventory blowout" banner next to the "store closing" sign that this store was likely participating in clearance sales even before it was selected for closure. Simultaneous with its initial 2019 closure announcement in April, Fred's said that a majority of its non-closing store base would nevertheless begin "total inventory blowout" sales, which seem quite similar in concept.
Heading inside, as was promised to us with the introduction of the concept, the pharmacy department is pretty much the first thing we encounter, painted purple to contrast from the rest of the store and located directly at the end of the first aisle, in the back right corner of the interior. (This location is strategic, so that the drive-thru window could be located along the right-side wall of the building.) Since the pharmacy was still active with employees and customers, I barely got any pictures of it, but this one should suffice. I do very much appreciate how the pharmacy is identified explicitly as "Middleton's Pharmacy" (emphasis mine).
The second image above looks the opposite direction down the first aisle, back toward the entrance. There you'll find a small cart storage area, as well as the Getwell Drug & Dollar logo presiding over the doors, joined by the message, "Thank You Middleton..... Stay well." This can be seen again, from a slightly better angle, in the image below.
Some glances across to the left side of the interior give us a better idea of the store's full layout. In front of the pharmacy counter are a series of short-height aisles, stocked with pharmaceuticals and other over-the-counter medicine and health, wellness, and beauty products. The rest of the interior consists of aisles placed perpendicular to these, taller in height and stocked with the store's selection of general merchandise, including food, pet care, cleaning supplies, and more. Basically, Getwell carried much of the same product categories (albeit in lesser quantities) as Fred's, with the exception of items such as home decor, furnishings, and accents.
The front end registers were separated from the salesfloor by another perpendicularly-placed aisle, this one stocked with your usual impulse-buy items. You can also see that the store was plastered with those "store closing" signs in a variety of places.
Facing the opposite direction down the same aisle, we see that a lot of the stock has already been cleared. Also, behind the pharmacy counter, be sure to note the custom posters ("Be well," "Play well," and in the earlier image, signs about the payment methods accepted and immunizations offered daily).
A small actionway serves as the division between the pharmacy and general merchandise halves of the store. You can see the front end a little bit better here, as well as both the restrooms and clinical care room adjacent to the pharmacy. The concrete floors and open ceiling were very modern compared to certain other, older Fred's stores.
Moving along down a mostly empty aisle -- evidently once home to the very odd couple of both kitchenware and apparel (!) -- to the left-side wall, followed by a view to the front (and an emergency exit).
This store, as you have seen, is very yellow. That was likely obvious from the sourced images I shared earlier in this post, too.
Generally, I’m a fan of the color yellow in store interiors. I liked it in Walmart’s Project Impact. I liked it in SuperTarget. I liked it in Kroger’s 2012/bountiful, fresh and local, and Marketplace décor packages. I’m not the biggest fan of the shade used in Kroger’s current “paint and putty” refresh to 2012/bountiful, but I love it in their current Urban Mix design. About the only place I absolutely don’t like it in is Harvey’s.
Now, looking through my pictures, the overbearing presence of the yellow in Getwell’s décor gets to be a bit much; but taken as a whole, in person, I remember liking it. Or at least, not disliking it. The purple and blue accents interspersed throughout the interior really help to scale back the yellow from 100 percent overtaking the atmospherics. And like, I said, I just have an affinity for the color anyway.
But that may just be me. I’m curious to read your thoughts on Getwell’s interior décor in the comments to this post.
As we walk down another mostly empty aisle, we approach a tiny endcap shelf fixture adorned with small "Be well," "Play well," and "Stay well" stickers featuring the three figures from the Getwell logo. Like I said: very attentive branding details with this chain!
Per the purple gooseneck signs, this aisle appears to have been home to toys, books, party supplies, and seasonal, in addition to the greeting cards seen at the end of the aisle. Also: isn't it strange how some of the goosenecks are uppercase while others are sentence case?
A couple more peeks over to the pharmacy side of the store. The windows along the upper walls were a nice architectural touch, and something a lot of Fred's stores don't have.
If you enlarge the second image above, you'll also be able to see a prominent poster affixed to the front of the pharmacy counter encouraging customers to download the Fred's Pharmacy app. This was likely posted following the retirement of the Getwell brand.
Compared to the rest of the store, the food department seemed to be selling rather poorly, although the comparatively small discount (only 20 percent off) surely was a factor in that. The merchandise was likely condensed into this aisle from other nearby shelves, too, making it look like the department hadn't sold as much as it really had.
I took the second picture to show you some of the more recent (at the time) Fred's-brand products bearing the chain's new logo. As you and I know, that logo -- alongside the broader initiative to further expand the company's selection of store-brand products -- would ultimately wind-up being very short-lived.
For the sake of preservation, below you'll find several images of the 2018 redesigned Fred's private brand products. You might also be interested in another profile on the redesign by Fred's former VP of private brands, accessible on page 76 of this PDF, as well as two additional pages from Marketing By Design.
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| Courtesy My Private Brand |
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| Courtesy Marketing By Design |
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| Courtesy Marketing By Design |
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| Courtesy Twitter |
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| Courtesy Twitter |
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| Courtesy Marketing By Design |
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| Courtesy Marketing By Design |
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| Courtesy Marketing By Design |
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| Courtesy Marketing By Design |
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| Courtesy Marketing By Design |
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| Courtesy Marketing By Design |
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| Courtesy Marketing By Design |
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| Courtesy Marketing By Design |
Returning to our tour, refrigerated and frozen cases lined the left half of the store's rear wall, joined by the slogan "Eat well" and a giant manifestation of one of those happy blue figures from the logo. Across the aisle, the gondola shelving is completely barren, filled with many boxes holding shelving parts and pegs instead.
We find the left-side wall similarly empty, with the same to be said of the endcaps visible in these images, too. The wall features a lineup of liquidator signs, and below those, a couple of orange printer paper sheets advertise fixtures as being half-off in price.
One more look over toward the "Eat well" wall -- note the half-empty aisle in the foreground -- followed by several more views of the "Play well" wall. Clearly, I was fascinated by that one, haha! In my defense, the way in which the movement of the jumping figure was presented, with its decreasing size and fading color, is very cool. (And it even lands on its feet!)
Closer to the front of the store, we find that this aisle stocked a limited selection of certain domestics -- guess this store had some home products after all! -- as well as trash bags, storage bags, and a similarly limited selection of electronics. Even some magazines can be seen hanging out on another of those endcap fixture racks in the second shot, which peers out across the store's front actionway (also starring the "fixtures for sale" liquidator sign). This store certainly made the most its square footage to maximize its product offerings!
The front wall of the store featured the "Save well" slogan, which also was the only one to be joined by both a rendering of the three figures exactly as they appear in the logo, and an actual three-dimensional sign of said figures (as all the rest that we've seen have simply been decals).
By the way, I remember having to mess with the lighting in some of these pictures, so that would be the reason why the yellow color looks slightly different/paler in any of them.
I tried to get the "Save well" sign on less of an angle in this shot, which is actually just a cropped version of the one immediately preceding it. You may also recognize this one as one of the teasers from my 100 Posts entry from last November.
It's a little hard to see in this image, but up at the corner of the roof, you can see some spider webs. A few are visible in other images of the "Play well" wall where the roof can be seen, too. I guess that's one downside to open ceilings, if they're not cleaned regularly!
As shown in the first photo above, this aisle was home to all sorts of cleaning supplies and paper goods; then, in the second and third photos, we can once again see out across the rest of the salesfloor and the front end, respectively. As you can see, every inch of space leading up to the registers was utilized, serving as home to a couple of refrigerated drink cases as well as a sunglasses/reading glasses display. Behind the register barricade were even more items, including small energy shot drink bottles, a can or two of spraypaint (?), and cigarettes (I guess Getwell caved and wound up stocking tobacco after all).
We see a small selection of appliances in the top image of the above set, joined by some automotive products on the endcap visible to the right; I took this shot mainly for the liquidator sign about the warranties, since as I've said before, I actually quite like the particular style of liquidator signage that Fred's employed for its store closing sales. Similarly, I took the second image (of the cart) for the close-up of the Getwell Drug & Dollar logo on the handle. I believe the entire fleet of regular shopping carts (like the one pictured) had been sold by the time of my visit, but the nontraditional basket-cart hybrids (like the one visible in the bottom image of the above set) were still available for purchase.
One more look down the dividing actionway, as well as over to the left-side wall, before we prepare to check out and leave. In the second image, based on the endcap, you can see that a lot of items in the store -- especially in the GM departments -- were Fred's brand, several even featuring the mid-2000s Fred's logo, which had already been retired several years before the Getwell Drug & Dollar concept even existed. In that case, I guess it's not so much that products with that logo sat on the shelves forever, as it is that their packaging was simply never swapped to the 2009 logo, for one reason or another.
In addition to the impulse buy items I previously mentioned, one item sitting for sale on the shelf placed in front of the registers was, of all things, a microwave; I took this picture of its printed sale tag specifically because the paper features the "Get (Good Every Time)" store brand logo. I didn't see any other references to that brand while I was here, and I assume it was likely phased out at the same time as the Getwell Drug & Dollar brand itself, if not sooner. As far as I can tell, the only products ever manufactured under the "Get" brand were the "gourmet" nuts and gummy bears shown as packaging examples on Greg Wilson's branding portfolio page.
The second pic above shows one of the register terminals, featuring a custom-to-Getwell "Did we do well?" sticker asking for customers' feedback, as well as a view of the card reader (which, surprisingly, showed the Getwell logo instead of the Fred's logo).
Two final interior views of the exit doors, both (unfortunately) badly edited, in regards to the yellow color on the walls. Sorry about that!
As a side note, be sure to note the pair of stickers on the doors, advertising the Getwell Drug & Dollar mobile app.
With our interior tour now complete, we now find ourselves back outside, wrapping up with a few more pictures of this store's exterior. So what did you think of this Fred's concept store? Please be sure to let me know in the comments!
The third pic of the above set shows the pharmacy drive-thru window, which is pretty much the only aspect of this store's exterior that we hadn't yet seen. Unlike your typical freestanding pharmacy/drugstore, the drive-thru here did not wrap around the rear of the building but was instead located along the structure's right-side wall. This effectively made it to where drivers made a bit of a donut when entering, driving through, and exiting the arrangement; lines were painted on the parking lot directing this traffic pattern, but had long since faded by the time of my visit, so they're not very visible in the photo.
At the edge of the property was the tall roadside sign bearing the Getwell Drug & Dollar logo, alongside the secondary sign "Pharmacy," if the "Drug" in the chain's name wasn't enough to get that point across. I'm disappointed that my first image of it came out unfocused, but at least it wasn't totally blurry to boot :/
As we exit back onto Middleton's Main Street -- also known as Highway 125 -- for a couple wide views of the building, be sure also to take note of the "Fred's Pharmacy is OPEN!" banner, beneath the Getwell sign. That was here because this store was one which had not yet seen Fred's close its pharmacy and transfer its prescription records elsewhere, meaning that, while its "front store" was indeed closing, Fred's was promising to keep its pharmacy operational until a buyer was found. Unfortunately, I'm not sure when the pharmacy closed or to whom the prescription records were transferred, but I have to imagine that occurred shortly after the chain closed all of its final remaining stores in October 2019.
Middleton does have an independent pharmacy, which at least puts it in a slightly better position than some other towns Fred's vacated which had no pharmacies whatsoever besides Fred's; but there's still a good chance that the records were transferred not to the independent pharmacy but to a chain pharmacy out of town, which would mean that residents now have to drive a lot farther to fill their prescriptions. As ever with all of the Fred's closures, this is one of the repercussions that upsets me the most, on behalf of the affected towns' residents.
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| Likely not from the Middleton store after all... |
We close out this store tour, as is customary with my Fred's posts, with some pics of my receipt, some Fred's bags, and that week's liquidation discount flyer. On all of these items, be sure to note that the Getwell logo is nowhere to be found; again, this was treated as a regular Fred's store following the Getwell brand's retirement (although the heading on the receipt does still read "Getwell Drug & Dollar"). Another interesting tidbit about the receipt was the presence (not pictured) of the line "All non-pharmacy sales are final" (emphasis mine); since that department, as noted, was to remain operational, I suppose it was still allowed to accept returns.
The bags may look the same due to a lack of any other reference items, but the one you see on the right was actually one of those oversized, extra-large bags (the one on the left was regular-sized). And as for the discount flyer... given that 1) it goes up to 90% off, which this store's sales had yet to do, and 2) it doesn't match others posted throughout the interior (and visible in several of my photos), I'm actually reasonably confident now that this flyer did not come from the Middleton store closure. But I also have accounted for all of my flyers from all of my other Fred's store visits, so I'm just leaving it here in this post because I can't figure out where the heck it really belongs. :P
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| Courtesy Internet Archive |
As promised, now that we're done visiting the Middleton store, it's time that we explore the remaining five Getwell Drug & Dollar locations. The addresses of all six are listed in the screenshot of the chain's former website shown above. I believe that that list is presented in the order in which the stores opened to the public, so we'll go down the list in the same order, beginning with what I believe to be Store #2: Glenwood, GA.
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| Courtesy LoopNet |
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| Courtesy LoopNet |
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| Courtesy LoopNet |
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| Courtesy LoopNet |
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| Courtesy LoopNet |
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| Courtesy LoopNet |
The majority of the photos for this section of the post have been sourced from lease listings for the various properties; that holds true for all of the Glenwood Getwell images you see here. Recall that I mentioned that five of the six Getwell stores survived into 2019; Glenwood seems to be the only one that did not, as it didn't appear on any of the Fred's closure lists throughout the year, indicating that it must have closed beforehand. But I have no clue when, exactly, it did close up shop.
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| Courtesy LoopNet |
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| Courtesy LoopNet |
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| Courtesy LoopNet |
I kept the aerial images as part of the set just to reiterate for you guys that the towns Getwell built in were even smaller than the towns Fred's built in. That means that there were even fewer options for the community, and even less competition for Getwell. Besides Dollar General and the gas station across the street, I don't think a single other retail store can be spotted in those aerial views. For these six towns, Getwell's departure leaves behind a lot more than just an empty building.
Up next is the Getwell Drug & Dollar store of Leland, MS. Instead of relying on lease listings, for this store I actually have my own images, taken on a brief drive through the town in April 2020.
As you can see, unlike the Glenwood, GA, store, Leland got to survive closure with all of its signage still completely intact, if sun-faded. It's not even blacked-out or anything: this contrasts it to most Fred's stores that closed in 2019, too. I'm not sure if this store was just one of the lucky ones not to get its signs blacked-out, or if it was more purposefully left unaltered, due to the fact that the Getwell brand was both more obscure than Fred's and, technically, already retired. (You'll note that the "Pharmacy" signs, at least, were indeed blacked out. I believe it's illegal to leave those visible once a pharmacy closes.)
The Leland Getwell was selected for closure in the very first Fred's round, released in April 2019, making it -- with the exception of Glenwood, of course -- the first of the five surviving Getwell Drug & Dollar stores to close.
Besides an apparently-rare Getwell Drug & Dollar store, the Mississippi Delta town of Leland is known for being the birthplace of Kermit the Frog. In town, there are several billboards, a water tower, and even a museum to this effect, and while it's been years since I've been to said museum, I remember it definitely being a cool place. Leland is where Jim Henson was raised, having been born in nearby Greenville, MS.
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| Courtesy Google Maps |
Like Store #1 in Middleton, Store #3 in Sulligent, AL, was selected for liquidation in the June 2019 round of Fred's closures. And unfortunately, I couldn't find any actual photos of it online, so this street view image will have to do. The Google car passed by this place in 2014; by the time of its next stop in 2019, the purple signage had faded as badly as we saw at the Leland Getwell.
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| Courtesy LoopNet |
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| Courtesy LoopNet |
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| Courtesy LoopNet |
The other Getwell Drug & Dollar store in Alabama -- located in Eutaw, AL, to be exact -- survived all the way to the end of Fred's run as a company, closing alongside the final 81 stores in the September round of closures. While the third photo above says "actual site photo," you'll note that the second one reads "identical prototype." That's because that second image was actually used in the lease listing for the Sulligent Getwell store. (You can tell it's actually the Eutaw Getwell from the address numbers at the entrance.) Obviously, though, each of the six Getwell stores were indeed identical in practically all respects!
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| Courtesy LoopNet |
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| Courtesy LoopNet |
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| Courtesy LoopNet |
The sixth and final Getwell Drug & Dollar store was located in Tompkinsville, KY, and closed in the July 2019 round. Like Sulligent, it wasn't actually built on a street corner, but it kept its corner-oriented layout nonetheless. Although it's at the edge of town, Tompkinsville does at least have a Walmart, as well as other retail and restaurant options; so I'd say that perhaps it's the best off of the six towns affected by Getwell's departure.
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You'd think that would be it, but nope, there's more! Remember, I said at the top of this post that Fred's ran two separate subsidiary chains. Getwell Drug & Dollar was one of them. Yazoo Trading Company was the other.
Unlike Getwell Drug & Dollar, Yazoo Trading Company differed drastically from Fred's. Where Getwell was basically a miniature Fred's store, Yazoo adopted an entirely different product line. Per the official company exposition as shared in the Quad Cities Daily in June 2013, Yazoo was positioned as a discount hardware, auto, and pet supplies store: "Fred's has long been a part of the Florence, Alabama community and we are excited to welcome our first new prototype store. The new Yazoo Trading Company features a wide selection of name brand hardware, automotive, lawn & garden, and pet supplies, including services such as paint mixing, key making, battery testing, etc."
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| Courtesy Internet Archive |
In other words, Yazoo seemed to be an entirely new venture for Fred's. Ultimately, four additional Yazoo Trading Company stores would be opened, for a total of five; these are listed in the webpage capture shown above. The Florence, AL, store appears to have been the first, followed by locations in Crossville, AL, Benton, TN, Macon, GA, and Temple, GA (meaning none of the Yazoo locations were near the Mid-South). All of the Yazoo Trading Company locations were existing stores converted over from Fred's, rather than being built from the ground-up, as the Getwell Drug & Dollar stores were.
(On the "from the ground-up" note: Greg Wilson, former creative director for Fred's Inc., has a page in his portfolio for Yazoo Trading Company, too, and interestingly, he describes it as "developing old brand into new." So perhaps this indicates Yazoo Trading Company was a previous store brand for Fred's, back in the day, that may have been dusted off and revived for these new stores? Who knows for certain...)
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| Courtesy Behance |
Speaking of the branding for Yazoo Trading Company, above is one example of a grand opening flyer for the chain, which explains the products and services it offers. (It also includes the question you're surely asking yourselves, "What's a Yazoo?" The correct answer is that Fred's likely lifted the name from any of the Yazoos in Mississippi -- Yazoo County, Yazoo City, the Yazoo River -- of which the latter came first and was named after the Yazoo tribe of Native Americans.) Additionally, below, thanks to the aforementioned Quad Cities Daily article, we get several good glimpses outside and inside a Yazoo Trading Company store, some of the only known photos to exist online of this short-lived chain:
No, your eyes don't deceive you -- that's definitely not your typical ribbon cutting ceremony! As the author wrote, "Normally, when the Chamber holds one of these events, we see a big blue ribbon being cut... But not today! Instead, the folks broke out a '1 by 8' and cut in half with a hand saw! A fitting touch for a hardware store." As you can see, the Florence Yazoo Trading Company opened in late June 2013, and I think the other five all opened before the end of August the same year.
As with Getwell Drug & Dollar, you can tell that a lot of attention to detail was placed on the Yazoo Trading Company brand identity and interior atmospherics. Major props to Greg Wilson and the Fred's creative team for their work on these two brands. Besides objectively reaching their peak in terms of number of stores in 2012, I'd argue that Fred's creative direction was right up there during the same time period, too.
These final two images show not the Florence store, but the Temple, GA, one. Like all the others, this one opened in 2013, and then, per this article, closed on May 31, 2016, "fewer than three years after it opened in the old Fred's location." I'd assume the others followed suit around the same time period. Only the Macon, GA, Yazoo reconverted back to Fred's; the others all just shut down entirely, and to this day, only the Temple store pictured above has been occupied by a new tenant. (This just goes to show how hard it is for these smaller towns to backfill what are, to them, comparatively large retail vacancies.)
So, it would seem that, in the end, Yazoo Trading Company was a less successful experiment than was Getwell Drug & Dollar. But, by the same token, it was also more "out there" for Fred's than was Getwell, given that Yazoo offered products and services not found at your regular Fred's; and for that, the project is certainly commendable. For that matter, Yazoo and Getwell both are very noteworthy points in Fred's history, representing the company's attempts to grow not only via its namesake stores but also with these two new experimental brands and product lines... so I'm excited and happy to have had the chance to share the story of them with you today. I hope you enjoyed this post, and as always, please feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments below!
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That just about wraps up this showcase of Fred's two lesser-known, briefly-lived subsidiaries. One final interesting thing that I'd like to point out before you go is that a number of independent pharmacies with the name "Getwell" -- stylized either like that, or as "GetWell" or "Get Well" -- have popped up recently. Fred's trademark applied specifically to the full term "Getwell Drug & Dollar," so these independent pharmacies aren't interfering with that; and in any case, I doubt the phrase "Get Well" can really be limited to just one owner, given its genericness and relevance to a pharmacy's mission.
What's more, none of the various non-Fred's Getwell pharmacies appear to be related to one another... but intriguingly, a lot of them have been formed by pharmacists formerly employed by Fred's who are now starting businesses on their own to fill the void left behind by Fred's departure (such as the GetWell Pharmacy chain whose logo is shown above, which has locations in Batesville, Hernando, Olive Branch, and Senatobia, MS -- all towns previously home to a Fred's Pharmacy). Again, there's likely no relation to Fred's 2012 Getwell Drug & Dollar concept, but I just thought it was a neat coincidence worth mentioning.
Our next Fred's post will return our focus to just a regular, plain old Fred's store, albeit one that is very significant to me personally and which has been featured here on the blog before. Please be sure to stay tuned for that post, which will come your way this September, as well as all other future posts in our Fred's series -- and heck, why don't you stick around for all future posts in general, while you're at it? :) Until next time, then -- thanks for reading, and have fun exploring the retail world wherever you are!
Retail Retell
