North America's first pharmacy strictly for women shut its doors June 30, one week shy of its first anniversary.

Lu's: A Pharmacy for Women, a social enterprise run by the 39-year-old Vancouver Women's Health Collective, couldn't attract the funding and the number of clients it needed, according to the group's spokesperson Nataly Richardson.

Richardson said women in the Downtown Eastside who patronized other pharmacies weren't comfortable switching, and they didn't necessarily know Lu's was in operation.

"We've spoken to other pharmacists in the area who have successful pharmacies, large pharmacies as well, and they all say that it takes at least a year for a pharmacy to get started up and have a steady clientele where you're no longer in severe debt and able to start paying it off," Richardson said. "We were strained financially and it was starting to become a hazard to the whole space itself."

Caryn Duncan, former executive director of the health collective, conceived the idea for a women's pharmacy in the Downtown Eastside in 2006. She envisioned a welcoming environment for women that she hoped would evolve into a women's clinic.

An advisory committee that included a retired pharmacist and businesswomen developed a business plan for the pharmacy. Vancity Community Foundation and the Central City Foundation helped Lu's come alive at 29 West Hastings St., between Funky Winker Beans and Army and Navy, with the help of countless individuals and businesses.

The pharmacy's revenues were meant to fund services at the health collective's resource centre, which had struggled for years with insecure government funding.

Duncan, who left the group in January, called the pharmacy's closure heartbreaking.

She said its demise was due to "many complexities," beyond a dearth of expected methadone prescriptions and controversy over an initial policy not to serve transgendered women.

The collective began welcoming self-identified women to the pharmacy and resource centre in mid-January.

Richardson said the group will slowly pay back its accumulated debt. Its resource centre will continue to run at the rear of the pharmacy and to rely on private donations.

If it could do the pharmacy's startup over, Richardson said the group would have funded its first year or two of services differently.

Duncan had expected to meet the pharmacy's first year budget of $1 million and that its operation would return a profit of $83,000 in 2010.

Richardson also believes increased marketing could have helped.

Nurse practitioners who can perform pap tests, write prescriptions and refer patients to specialists continue to accept appointments at the resource centre, which offers free yoga at noon on Fridays.

crossi@vancourier.com