The First Consumer Value Store (1963)
The company began in 1963 when brothers Stanley Goldstein and Sidney Goldstein, together with partner Ralph Hoagland, opened the first Consumer Value Store in Lowell, Massachusetts. The abbreviation of that name, CVS, became the enduring brand.
The earliest stores sold health and beauty products at discount prices and did not initially contain pharmacies. Expansion was rapid: the chain grew to roughly a dozen and a half stores within its first year and continued opening locations across New England and the broader Northeast. Pharmacy departments were added to the format later in the decade, setting the stage for the drugstore identity the company would carry for the rest of the century.
The Melville Corporation Era
In 1969 CVS was acquired by the Melville Corporation, a large retail conglomerate whose holdings at various times included footwear and apparel chains. As a Melville subsidiary, CVS gained the capital and scale to grow well beyond its regional footprint.
During the following decades the chain expanded both organically and through acquisitions of other drugstore operators, adding pharmacy counters throughout its stores and building a presence across multiple states. By the 1990s CVS had become one of the leading drugstore chains in the country and the most valuable business within the Melville portfolio, which increasingly focused Melville's strategy on pharmacy retailing.
Spin-off and Renaming to CVS Corporation (1996)
In the mid-1990s Melville restructured, shedding its non-drugstore businesses to concentrate on pharmacy. In 1996 the parent company was renamed CVS Corporation, and CVS emerged as an independent, publicly traded company listed on the New York Stock Exchange, with Stanley Goldstein among its early leaders.
As a standalone company, CVS pursued aggressive growth. It acquired the Revco drugstore chain in 1997, greatly expanding its store count, and later added Eckerd locations in 2004 and freestanding Albertsons pharmacies in 2006. These deals turned CVS into one of the two dominant national drugstore chains alongside Walgreens.
MinuteClinic and the Caremark Merger (2006-2007)
In 2006 CVS acquired MinuteClinic, a pioneer of retail-based walk-in health clinics staffed by nurse practitioners and physician assistants. Located inside CVS stores, MinuteClinic offered vaccinations, screenings, and treatment for minor conditions, signaling the company's early move toward delivering care rather than only dispensing products.
The following year brought a transformational deal. In 2007 CVS merged with Caremark Rx, one of the nation's largest pharmacy benefit managers, to form CVS Caremark. The combination joined a retail pharmacy network with a company that administered drug benefits for employers and health plans, giving CVS influence across both the dispensing and the financing sides of prescription drugs. Tom Ryan led the merged company as chairman and chief executive.
Quitting Tobacco and Becoming CVS Health (2014)
Under chief executive Larry Merlo, who took the top job in 2011, the company made a defining decision in 2014. In February of that year CVS announced it would stop selling cigarettes and all tobacco products across its stores, and it completed the removal on September 3, 2014, ahead of its original October deadline. It was the first national pharmacy chain to do so.
Alongside the tobacco decision, the corporation rebranded from CVS Caremark to CVS Health. Leadership framed both moves as part of a shift in purpose: a company positioning itself as a health care provider could not credibly continue to sell products so closely linked to disease. The change was estimated to cost billions in annual tobacco-related sales but was cast as central to the company's long-term health mission.
The Aetna Acquisition and an Integrated Model (2017-2023)
CVS Health took its biggest step toward vertical integration by acquiring the health insurer Aetna. Announced in late 2017 in a deal valued at roughly $69 billion, the acquisition closed in 2018. It brought a major insurance business inside CVS Health, combining retail pharmacy, pharmacy benefit management, and health insurance in a single organization intended to coordinate care and manage costs across the system.
The company continued expanding into care delivery in the 2020s. In 2023 it acquired Signify Health, a home-based health assessment and services company, and Oak Street Health, a chain of primary care clinics focused on older adults on Medicare. These deals reflected a strategy of owning more of the patient's care journey rather than relying solely on prescriptions and store traffic.
Leadership Transitions and the Modern Era (2021-2025)
Larry Merlo retired in early 2021 and was succeeded as chief executive by Karen Lynch, previously the head of Aetna, who became one of the most prominent women leading a large U.S. corporation. Lynch oversaw the company through the later stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, during which CVS pharmacies and clinics administered large volumes of tests and vaccines.
Facing pressure from rising medical costs in its insurance unit and a falling share price, the board replaced Lynch in October 2024 with David Joyner, a longtime company executive who had most recently led CVS Caremark. Entering 2025, CVS Health remained one of the largest companies in the United States by revenue, operating thousands of retail pharmacies, the Caremark pharmacy benefit business, the Aetna insurance arm, and a growing set of care-delivery assets, while working to stabilize earnings and refine its integrated health strategy.