Bay Area's Elephant Pharmacy abruptly closes all locations

[villager]

Source: SF Chronicle


Elephant Pharm closes its stores

Victoria Colliver, Chronicle Staff Writer


(02-03) 14:22 PST BERKELEY -- Elephant Pharm, a Bay Area drug store chain known for its holistic approach to health remedies, abruptly closed all three stores on Tuesday and announced plans to file for bankruptcy.

The drug store chain, which is based in Berkeley and also has stores in Walnut Creek and San Rafael, employed about 190 people at all locations, including its home office. A Los Altos store, which opened about two years ago, closed earlier this fall.

The company, which offered traditional prescriptions along with Chinese herbs, yoga supplies and other alternative products, cited the downturn in the economy and accompanying tightening of the credit markets for its decision to liquidate under Chapter 7 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code.

"The company has been burdened with obligations that were quite difficult for a company of our size to carry," Elephant Pharm's chief executive officer, Kathi Lentzsch, said in a statement.

Over the past year, Elephant Pharm continued discussions with potential investors, cut costs and closed the Los Altos store in an unsuccessful effort to avoid Tuesday's decision, the company said.

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Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/02/03/BUST15ME5A.DTL

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

1. Must be tough times for the placebo industry.

People are having to choose between buying food, and buying a bunch of hooey.

I'm glad to see they're making the right choice.

[LeftyMom]

2. I'm not surprised.

I used to work for a company that did business with them. They were forever trying to order product we'd discontinued, paying the wrong amount on bills, getting orders mixed up then bitching when we shipped them to the location they requested and not the one that they actually intended them to go to... They'd cause more headaches than some of the chains we worked with that were ten times the size.

I don't know how they handled things on the retail end, but their back office people did not have their shit together.

[villager]

4. it was a good neighborhood place, with a video section as a "loss leader"

..but I can't speak to the state of the back office. It's also possible it tried to do too much -- part grocery store, part drug store, offering in-store classes, etc.

[asthmaticeog]

3. Awww, where will gooey new age hippie dumbshits get fake medicine now?

[villager]

5. Oh, they had most of the products big pharma spends millions telling you you must have

...so you could've shopped there comfortably, too.

Or, at least, shopped there.

[REP]

6. It wasn't all snake oil and fairy shit

I shopped at the Los Altos one for Mrs Meyer's cleaning stuff, valerian (for my cats - they love it; it's like catnip) and Early July cookies. They had regular stuff in addition to the hippy-dippy stuff, and s wonderful selection of non-toxic cleaning stuff and other interesting things.

[mackerel]

7. They had a lot of good products at lower prices than Whole Foods.

I hope at least Whole Foods stays around.