There was a time when folks gathered at the soda fountain of a local drugstore, talking current events and solving community problems before they became headlines. Even a time, a century earlier, when Abe Lincoln occasionally strolled into the same drugstore, befriending the owner and perusing the book collection. These are recollections that could be lifted from the pages of a Mark Twain novel, but they are actually part of the history of an independent HME provider in Danville, Ill.

The story of Gulick’s Illiana Medical Equipment & Supply began 156 years ago. Along the way, the company has merged, changed names, and reinvented its business model—not once, but a few times. For almost a century, however, there has been one constant: a family, the Gulicks, who have been involved in the business one way or another since 1905.

Considering that the success rate for family businesses transitioning from one generation to the next is extremely low, the fact that the Gulicks have managed to pass the torch across four generations is a remarkable lesson in adaptation and perseverance.

Today, Steve Gulick, the fourth-generation president of Gulick’s Illiana Medical, is writing the latest chapter of the story, which pivots on the decision to focus solely on HME. But even as he looks ahead to future challenges, Gulick continues to honor—and, in fact, rely on—the traditions and small-town loyalties that distinguish his family’s company.

Time Travels
Gulick’s Illiana Medical began as a drugstore in 1846 named Woodbury & Co after its owner, Dr William W.R. Woodbury. The store’s most famous customer was a young Abraham Lincoln, then traveling as a circuit lawyer, who frequently stopped in to buy medicine, books, and stationery. Today, a mannequin of the former president sits in the front of Gulick’s, welcoming customers—a humorous, homespun answer to Wal-Mart’s greeters, Gulick says.

It was Steve Gulick’s great-grandfather who began the official Gulick connection in 1905 when Woodbury employed him as a pharmacist. He left 10 years later to start his own business in town, but returned in the 1930s to buy Woodbury & Co and run it along with his other store—no small financial juggling act in the depths of the Great Depression.

By the 1960s, when Steve’s father, Tom Gulick, acquired the business, the store was a cornerstone of the community. Steve Gulick remembers the store’s soda fountain as an unofficial town square. “All the problems of the Danville community were solved in the morning at the soda fountain before they ever got to the City Council,” he says. “You could set your watch by the people who came through the door. When I was 16, I knew all the bankers, Realtors, and other bigwigs in town. I met them at the soda fountain.”

By 1979, the elder Gulick thought it was about time to put the family name on the outside of the store. He renamed the business Gulick Pharmacy and decided to merge it with the other drugstore he operated across town to reduce duplicate costs. Steve Gulick has a “hands-on” memory of the consolidation, because he and some high-school friends moved the entire inventory of the closing store in a Chevy, an El Camino, and a Pinto.

It was about the same time the seeds of Illiana Medical took root, albeit slowly in a corner of the pharmacy where some equipment was displayed. “My father had the foresight to see that the national chains were changing the drugstore business into something entirely different,” Gulick says. Third-party insurance programs were being introduced, dictating the price of prescriptions, regardless of costs to the pharmacy. In addition, national competitors, such as CVS Pharmacy, were moving into Danville.

Gulick Pharmacy would compete against the likes of CVS for 20 years, rejecting buy-out offers on several occasions. But the family was not standing idle, hoping the insurance climate would change for the better. “The best thing I ever did was expanding into HME,” says Tom Gulick, who “retired” in 1999 but comes into the office every morning to handle the bills. “I could see the handwriting on the wall for the drug business. Insurance companies were cutting the prices to an unprofitable level, so we had to have something to make up the difference.”

From Corner to Showroom
As they ventured into a new business area back in 1979, the Gulicks started modestly. Tom Gulick brought his wife, Loretta, and son to a weeklong seminar so they could all learn “how to speak Medicare, how the machines worked, how to service and deliver them,” he says. “Then we waited for the phone to ring.”

Over the years, the HME portion of the business grew while the pharmacy business continued to face margin pressures. “My father was tired of working the pharmacy counter,” Steve Gulick recalls. “We hired a part-time guy, but when he left for a full-time job, I had to rent a pharmacist at $400 a day.”

Three years ago, when CVS returned with an even more attractive offer to buy the pharmacy business, the family decided to close that chapter of the story. They accepted and sold the drugstore. “Now we are concentrating on one thing: the home medical business,” Steve Gulick says. “It has gone from being in the corner to the whole store, with 5,500 square feet of showroom space.”

Renamed after the sale, Gulick’s Illiana Medical Equipment & Supply rents, sells, and services home oxygen, power wheelchairs, hospital beds, walkers, and sleep apnea solutions. The company also provides lift installations and vehicle hand controls.

“We have done a lot of adapting over the years, from a drugstore to nursing service to HME,” Steve Gulick says. “The community did not want us to sell the drugstore because we took care of them. We took care of some families in this community for 60 years. When they walked in the door, we knew who they were. They didn’t run when the other drugstores came to town. They knew if it was Christmas Day and they were sick and needed medicine, they could get hold of us—24-hour service.”

That kind of mutual loyalty between company and client now serves the Gulick’s HME business well, even in niche areas such as diabetic supplies that many independent providers shy away from because of low reimbursements and increased competition from online mail-order vendors.

“A lot of people, especially elderly customers, do not like to do mail order,” Gulick explains. “They like to deal with local people.”

And the nine employees at Gulick’s certainly fit the local bill. Two on the service side have worked with the family for 46 years each. In fact, “the rookie” of the team has been on board 15 years, according to Gulick, who started 31 years ago, sweeping floors and washing windows at the age of 11. “I don’t have any turnover,” he says. “They like the family atmosphere and we pay a fair wage. And most important, they like what they are doing.”

Staying Power
Accredited since 1989, Gulick’s Illiana now competes with three national HME companies. But the service-intensive nature of the business, and the company’s long-standing ties to the community, give the family confidence that it will be able to weather whatever the future brings, though Medicare is a constant challenge and the threat of competitive bidding is troubling.

“I don’t think the independent is ever going away,” Gulick says. “People have been saying, ‘The big boys are going to eat you up,’ for a long time. But this business is too customer service-oriented. It is not right if you call a number, get a voice mail, and someone gets back to you 5 days later. Here, you get Becky Garrison and Karen Smith, and if you don’t like what you hear, I’m right around the corner.”

For Steve Gulick, carrying on the standards set by his father (and grandfather and great-grandfather) is a responsibility that is part of belonging to the community. “People rely on us to be problem solvers, social workers, and insurance whizzes,” he says. “Just because a patient gets a wheelchair and goes out the door [does not mean you’ll never see that patient again]. Down the road, that patient may need a hospital bed or oxygen. You treat [the patient] the right way and you get the return business.”

Returning for 156 years—and counting.

Aaron R. Smith is a contributing writer for Dealer/Provider.