Sweet Success

In the shadow of Universal Studios, a few short blocks from the streets where stars like Jane Wyman and John Wayne made names for themselves, sits a community drugstore that caters to North Hollywood's less visible residents — the Hispanic, Russian and African American citizens who have made Tinsel Town their home. PX Drugstore has served this neighborhood for more than 27 years, staying true to a concept that keeps the store from going the way of silent movies: “We keep track of what's going on in our community,” says Jeff Willard, PX's home health coordinator.

Noticing a growing demand for home care items, PX added a full-service home medical equipment component in November 2001. This year, heeding the health care headlines, the store beat its big chain competitors to the punch, adding a comprehensive “Diabetes Shoppe,” designed to cater to ethnic communities in which the incidence of diabetes is higher than average, and growing.

“As I go to local communities, I'm seeing that diabetes is becoming more and more of an epidemic. Diabetes runs rampant in the Hispanic and African-American communities,” Willard says.

The Diabetes Shoppe, the business concept for which was developed by pharmaceutical distributor Amerisource-Bergen, carries the standard test strips and blood glucose monitoring kits, but goes a step beyond typical diabetes supplies by offering skincare and footcare products, nutritional items and medicines, such as cough syrup, that are specially formulated for diabetics.

“We brought in food and nutritional items diabetic people didn't know existed or were afraid to try because they thought [the items] would taste bad,” Willard explains. “We now carry a full line of mousses, cake and pancake mixes, cookies, syrups, jellies, fudge and all sorts of hard candy — in addition to the traditional Glucerna bars and meal replacement bars.”

In true Hollywood fashion, PX arranged a gala health fair in June to show off the new and improved store. Staff members from PX and its parent company, Modern Health, hit the streets to talk up the fair to local businesses, many of whom donated gifts to be presented at the event — “free haircut, free ice cream, 10 percent off this, 20 percent off that,” Willard says. Willard walked a half-mile to one mile in either direction of the store to distribute promotional flyers.