Top 100 Retail Movers & Shakers: 2010

Sponsored by Motorola, Inc. Sponsored by RetailCustomerExperience.com
Tags: Customer Experience, Online Retailing, Retail - Apparel, Retail - Electronics, Retail - General, Retail - Home Center, Specialty Stores, Top 100 Retail
Type: Guide
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Presenting the Top 100 Retail Movers & Shakers

You don't need us to tell you that the retail industry is going through one of the toughest times in its history. Newscasters, pundits, analysts, shopkeepers and even shoppers themselves are well versed in the message that these have been some extraordinary months, an agonizing period when hundred-year-old businesses have vanished, in which millions of dollars of value have simply disappeared, in which careers, legacies and institutions have met their end.

What I can tell you that's different is this: Some retailers, individuals and product suppliers are doing amazing things. Pressure can make diamonds out of coal. Iron sharpens iron, after all, and fire fights fire. Rock beats scissors.

We believed that now was a good time to examine the retail world with a critical eye, to see who was doing what in this turbulent era, and how well they were doing it. Hence, our first Top 100 Retail Movers & Shakers.

Consider the document you're now reading an airplane-level overview of retail today, a list that combines the negative forces at play with the positive things that are being done to combat them. The players, the brands, the technologies and trends. The companies, things and ideas that are impacting the retail industry.

We started by identifying roughly 300 candidates for top movers and shakers. We then took the list to members of our Retail Customer Experience Advisory Panel, and, in a two-stage voting process, they chose the top 100 and put them in order. 

It's an eclectic list, and one that will certainly be an interesting time capsule of our industry someday. But for now, it is loaded with insights that retailers can use and learn from — such as how to improve the process by which products are delivered (No. 6) or how to engage shoppers with a brand in ways never before possible (No. 31) or how to encourage people to not only come into your store but stay there for hours on end (No. 49).

It's no surprise that at the very top of the list are found the negative economic conditions of the day. But right next to them is recognition of retailers that are thriving (Nos. 3, 7, 11 and 12). And for every concern or worry on the list, there are probably a dozen trends and techniques that are only beginning to show their potential for positive change.

We invite your feedback on this list, which we envision becoming an annual endeavor. Certainly we have left some things off; that's what my e-mail address is for. Maybe you think some of our choices are crazy. That's what my boss's e-mail address is for. But you couldn't pay us a better compliment than to use this list as a starting-off point for a heated argument with colleagues while tipping back a beer or two.

James Bickers, editor