Walgreens History and Background: Walgreens was founded in 1901 measuring 50 feet by 20 feet by Charles R. Walgreen, Sr.. Mr. Walgreen was born near Galesburg, Illinois and his family later moved to Dixon, Illinois, a town about 60 miles north of his hometown. Mr. Walgreens' father was a farmer who became a businessman and saw great potential in the Rock River Valley (Walgreen, n.d., p.1). At the age of 16, Charles Walgreen had his first experience working in a drug store. It didn't always have pleasant experiences but it was paid work. He had an accident in a shoe factory that severed his left middle finger from the top joint. This injury also prevents him from playing any sports at school. After a year and a half with the drug store, Mr. Walgreen left to pursue something bigger in the big city, Chicago. Walgreen moved to Chicago in 1893, where he found at least 1,500 drug stores already competing for business. Mr. Walgreen was broke and threw a couple of pennies into the Chicago River and devoted himself to his profession and a life of perseverance and hard work. He didn't want help from his family because he wanted to succeed on his own (Walgreen, n.d., p. 1). Walgreen knew that if it wanted to succeed in the pharmaceutical industry, it would have to learn as much as possible from other pharmacists. Mr. Walgreen did a series of jobs with top pharmacists named Samuel Rosenfeld, Max Grieben, William G. Valentine and Isaac W. Blood. However, Mr. Walgreen found that these pharmacists were teaching him old-fashioned and complacent ways of running a pharmacy. He asked himself: “where was the choice of products that customers actually wanted and what about customer service?” Mr. Walgreen c...... middle of paper...... $1.2 billion, thanks to improved working capital and pharmacy performance. First-quarter sales increased 9.5% from the prior-year quarter to $16.4 billion. Total sales at comparable stores (those open at least a year) increased 4.9% in the quarter, while sales at front-end comparable stores increased 2.7%. Prescription sales, which accounted for 66.2% of sales in the quarter, increased 10.0%, while prescription sales at comparable stores increased 6.1%. The number of prescriptions filled by the company increased 12.0% compared to the first quarter of last year, including a 0.7 percentage point benefit due to more patients filling 90-day prescriptions. The company exceeded the industry-wide prescription growth rate, excluding Walgreens, by 5.5 percentage points during the same period reported by IMS Health (Walgreens, n.d., p. 1).