Ever walk into a new place that you can’t wait to tell your friends and family about? What was it about that chic restaurant, little Main Street shop, or urban boutique that made you so excited to share it? We believe there are things that resonate with people and make a space or business feel like it fits them above and beyond the products sold. When opening this business we knew that we wanted to fit our community and be a place that people enjoyed being at. We noticed that all the places that we were excited enough to share with others were not routine stops for us at all. Why can’t our daily or weekly errands involve spaces that we love to be in? Why couldn’t a pharmacy be beautiful and thoughtful in design? Must our logo have a capsule worked into it? Should we figure out where to buy those cheesy graphics of people taking tablets and eating apples? We decided that with Front Range, we would try our hardest to look and feel exactly like our competition didn’t – to look and feel like somewhere our patients and customers would enjoy coming to.
Our large, chain competitors create plans and implement them in almost the same format across the nation, regardless of the community they are in. Small businesses have the opportunity to reflect where they are and be unique. When we planned our space, we knew that we didn’t want to design a pharmacy in the typical sense. We did not want to squeeze customers on to one tiny counter for drop-off, pick-up, and to ask the pharmacists questions. We also knew that we wanted a comfortable place to take patients for counseling, vaccinations, or appointments. Most of all, we just could not fathom the idea of surrounding the pharmacy in plexiglass or walling it off. We wanted Front Range to be the anthesis of our competition. We drew in long counters with access to personnel the entire width, we carved out generous space for a private patient room, and we made sure that we created opportunity for people to breathe in our store while they waited. We wanted the Taj Mahal of pharmacies, but unfortunately our skinny SBA loan left us with a dollar store budget. If you follow us on social media (@frontrangepharmacy) then you might have noticed that this week we have been covered in sawdust every single day. To make Front Range look and feel the way we wanted it to, we are spending money outside of our loan and using some of our favorite hobbies to create custom ceiling drops and valences, functional pharmacy cabinets, and bespoke merchandise shelving. We plan to play to our space’s high ceilings and beautiful natural light with a light colored walls, wooden floors, tile accents, and less “typical” retail shelving than you might expect. We want to balance textures of wood, stone, and textiles to make you feel comfortable and cozy. We want our pharmacy to feel like the place you are most welcome, to feel like a space that is uniquely yours, and to feel like you are home.
“A brand is not a logo. A brand is not an identity. A brand is not a product.” “A brand is a person’s gut feeling about a product, service, or organization.” – Marty Neumeier
At Front Range Pharmacy, we subscribe to the idea that a “brand” is not something you design or construct, but rather a reputation that your community bestows on your business. Because of this, the process of creating the tools with which you identify us was critical. When thinking of a name we knew that we wanted something that, without a doubt, would be recognized as local. Most of all we did not want to tie the business to our own names- there would not be a Logan’s Pharmacy or Scruggs Drug on S. Broadway. When brainstorming logos and fonts, we found it was important for us to stay away from pharmacy themes and create something that didn’t look too gaudy. After deciding to name our store Front Range Pharmacy, we tinkered with logo design and learned quickly that we needed a professional – enter Hannah Van Woert. After just a brief conversation, she was able to create the perfect tools for communicating Front Range. The unique yet recognizable mountains over a modern text invoked the sense of familiarity that we were after. While we absolutely love our name, logo, and colors – we needed a brand slogan that made it all stick. In a city where you have a little bit of everything right at your fingertips, we wanted introduce the idea that you could choose a local pharmacy. The people of Denver are always conscience of their choices in shopping- leaning toward something uniquely Colorado and local as much as possible. “Be Independent, Choose Local” is meant to urge our community to realize that a choice now exists in the type of pharmacy you frequent. Communicating the essence of our small business is just a small piece in becoming a part of the community, but an important one nonetheless.
Our competition has a ton of capital to look, feel, and operate how they think will capture a market best. They choose to spend it by being on every corner making it “inconvenient” for you to turn them down. At Front Range Pharmacy, we are grateful that we do not have to follow suit. If a brand is not what a company tries to create but rather what a community says a company is, then we hope that you say that we are simply just “yours”. We want to be a company that you trust, a space where you feel at home, and an image that you are proud to be associated with. We are eager to start this relationship, and hope that Front Range Pharmacy becomes not just a place, but a brand that you can’t wait to share!
Check out this brief video capturing a little of our week, courtesy of Burd’s Eye Photography:
