Cohen recalls Duane Reade's emergence.(My Turn)(Eli Cohen)

Some 51 years ago--in late 1959 to be precise--Eli Cohen, a 33-year-old entrepreneur with a retailing background that leaned heavily to apparel, opened a 500-foot "cut-rate" store on Broadway, between Duane and Reade Streets, in Manhattan. The store mainly sold health and beauty aids, and its appeal, at a time when Fair Trade laws were being seriously questioned for the first time, was price. "Even though Fair Trade pricing on national brands was still protected, we believed we had an opportunity to be less stringent in following Fair Trade prices," says Cohen today. "Turns out we were right. We had injunctions issued against us. But it never went further than that."

The store was a …