SUPERDRUG
Superdrug Stores plc (trading as Superdrug) is a health and beauty retailer in the United Kingdom, and the second largest behind Boots UK. The company has been a subsidiary of A.S. Watson Group since October 2002, itself part of the Hong Kong conglomerate CK Hutchison Holdings.
It trades from nearly nine hundred shops across the United Kingdom and Ireland, and also serves Denmark, Finland and Sweden online. Superdrug employs over 14,000 people. Besides health and beauty products, the company has pharmacies with consultation rooms in over 220 shops, and a further 19 contain nurse clinics. It maintains links with sister companies also owned by A.S. Watson Group: Savers and The Perfume Shop.
In 1964, Superdrug was incorporated under the name of Leading Supermarkets Limited by the Goldstein brothers in London, both of whom had experience working in the groceries retail industry. Later that year the business adopted the present name. The first Superdrug shop opened in Putney, London on 26 April 1966
By 1968, there were three shops trading in Putney, Croydon and Streatham. In the same year Superdrug acquired its first distribution centre, in Wimbledon. The chain grew rapidly, and expanded to a chain of forty shops by the beginning of the 1970s. In 1971, The Rite Aid Corporation, an American chemist chain, acquired 49% of the business.
By 1981, there were three hundred Superdrug shops in the United Kingdom, and they opened their 11,148 m² (120,000 ft²) distribution centre and office complex at Beddington Lane in Croydon. This centre closed in July 2007, and the southern distribution operation moved to Dunstable, although the head office remains in Croydon. The northern distribution operates from Pontefract, West Yorkshire.
In 1983, the business was floated on London's Unlisted Securities Market
In March 1987, Superdrug was sold to Woolworth Holdings (now known as Kingfisher plc) for £57 million. The sale allowed accelerated growth of the brand through utilisation of Kingfisher's surplus high street property portfolio and substantial financial assets.
In January 1988, Superdrug acquired Tip-Top, a discount chemist chain which had a large presence in the north of England and Scotland, and Share Drug Stores plc, a southern-based chain. These acquisitions and an aggressive expansion programme saw the chain grow to six hundred outlets throughout the United Kingdom.
Superdrug continued to grow over the next eight years, increasing profitability and market share. In 1995, the company began a rebranding programme, which saw it leave behind its discount heritage and move upmarket, with a new corporate identity – under the banner "the real beauty is the price" – and new larger shops in prime retail locations.
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