Rock Hill Pharmacy closes

Employees surprised; customers' prescriptions forwarded to Good Pharmacy

By Jason Foster - jfoster@heraldonline.com

Rock Hill Pharmacy, which formerly operated as The Medicine Shoppe for more than a decade, has closed amid financial issues.

The pharmacy at 1030 Oakland Ave. closed Tuesday to the surprise of customers and employees, who said they were given no warning.

“It was just a business decision; that's all it was,” owner Ken Fetuao said. “It wasn't as profitable as it should have been. … I'm trying to prevent getting into a hole that I can't get out of.”

Asked why he gave no warning to customers or the four employees, Fetuao declined to comment.

He said outstanding customer prescriptions would be forwarded to Good Pharmacy, or to a pharmacy of the customer's choice.

“I apologize (to customers), but you've got to make a business decision at some point,” Fetuao said. “You can't continue to do something that doesn't work.”

The pharmacy opened 11 years ago. Fetuao had owned it for about two months. Though the pharmacy had struggled, a medical equipment business that also operates at the site and is “very profitable” will remain open, Fetuao said.

Meanwhile, the swiftness of the closure left workers stunned.

Head pharmacist Lora Crouch said she came to work Tuesday and found her key no longer would unlock the door.

“There was no warning, no nothing,” said Crouch, who had worked at the pharmacy for four years. “It blind-sided me.”

Recently, however, Crouch said the pharmacy had struggled to pay its bills. It was in debt “thousands of dollars” with its Spartanburg-based supplier and for the past two weeks was no longer able to place orders for medicine or supplies, she said.

“It was just a bad situation,” she said. “You can't run a pharmacy when you don't have anything to run it with.”

Crouch said her concern now is with the pharmacy's many longtime customers.

“We had a very close, personal relationship with our customers,” she said.

Customers who came to get their pills Tuesday were in shock over the closing, and left with uncertainty.

“I had no way of telling them what to do,” Crouch said.

Judy Craig, 60, learned the pharmacy had closed when she called about some prescriptions. She had been a customer since the mid-1990s.

“We're very upset,” she said. “We're devastated.”

Craig said she preferred to use the pharmacy because it offered a better customer experience than chain stores. Service was fast and the workers always made sure she had the right medicine.

“They knew you on a face-to-face basis,” she said. “They knew all about you.”

The employees also would go out of their way to help, Craig said, even offering to drive a prescription to a customer's house if the pharmacy didn't initially have enough medicine on hand to fill it.

“I sure am going to miss all those employees.”