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“We don’t really consider CVS, Walgreens and Walmart to be direct competitors,” says Dougherty’s CEO Andy Komuves. “The chain stores have all become about selling other things.”

Many shoppers might duck into a chain store in search of a greeting card, some last-minute Halloween candy or a cheap bottle of wine, vaguely aware of the pharmacy in the back.

Did you know?

“It’s sort of how pharmacy began,” Komuves says.

Nearly all drugs were created in local pharmacies from plant extracts until manufacturing companies took over the industry in the 1950s and ’60s, making the pharmacist simply a dispenser.

Dougherty’s, however, never abandoned its original role and is now the largest drug com- pounding pharmacy in the Southwest. The privately held company makes about $25 million a year, compared to the $3.5 million of an average chain store.

Dougherty’s iconic neon sign includes “Airway” in the name because the store once had a location near DFW Airport called “Dougherty’s Airway Pharmacy.” When it moved to Preston Royal Village in 1967, there was a debt owned to pharmacy. The owners worried that changing the name would legally void the debt, so they kept the name.

Our neighborhood mom-and-pop pharmacy has been defying the odds since its beginning. Bill Dougherty opened the store, originally in Oak Cliff, in October 1929. Two weeks later, the stock market crashed. With little competition at the time, the pharmacy survived. In 1967, the business moved to Preston Royal Village and now has another location at Forest Park.

Another large component of Dougherty’s sales is medical equipment such as mobility aids and bathroom safety products that cater to our neighborhood’s older demographic. But Komuves says the pharmacy is just as relevant to younger adults who might be caring for an aging parent while also raising a healthy family.

“We realize that the focus is going toward young moms,” he says. “You can take them through the family’s life.”