Kudos To TWICE Award Winners

The votes are in and have been counted (with no “hanging chads” by the way), and the TWICE Retail Excellence Award winners have been selected by you, our readers. As veteran readers of TWICE may remember, we used to select our TWICE Retail Excellence Awards by polling our editors and presenting the award at an event during International CES every January.

That tradition ended a few years ago and as I mentioned in this space a few issues ago, we thought it was necessary to bring back the awards with all the changes that have occurred in the industry during the past few years. The chance we took was opening up the voting to you, our readers, with online balloting.

While any online voting is somewhat unscientific, we received a statistically strong response to our call for voting on the best retailers in the industry, with little “ballot box” stuffing or any other irregularities. The selections that you, our readers, made were shrewd ones that any fair-minded observer couldn't really quarrel with.

Before mentioning our award winners I'd like to congratulate the nominees by category: Best National Retailer: CompUSA, Target, RadioShack and Wal-Mart; Best Regional Retailer:Cowboy Maloney's Electric City, Harvey Electronics, H.H. Gregg and P.C. Richard & Son; Best Independent Retailer: Audio Advisors, Bjorn's Audio Video Home Theater, Ovation and Schaefer's TV & Appliance; Best Consumer Direct Retailer:Amazon.com, Crutchfield, Huppins OneCall and QVC; and Retailer of the Year: CompUSA, Dell Computer, Nebraska Furniture Mart and Wal-Mart.

All of them would have been worthy winners, but here are the retailers you selected for our first online vote for the TWICE Retail Excellence Awards: Best National Retailer and Retailer of the Year: Best Buy; Best Regional Retailer:Nebraska Furniture Mart; Best Independent Retailer: Abt Electronics; and Best Consumer Direct Retailer: Dell Computer.

Remember that the awards are based on their performance during the 12 months starting from September 2003 and ending August 2004. Selections were made on such qualities as merchandising excellence, store design, customer service, market share in their respective areas, contributions to the industry and overall retail innovation.

TWICE's retailing specialist, senior editor Alan Wolf, will profile each of the winners starting on p. 18, so I won't go over the specifics of each winner. But the common thread that marks the achievements of Best Buy, Nebraska Furniture Mart, Abt Electronics and Dell Computers during the past year, and dare I say during the past several years, has been an entrepreneurial spirit. These organizations never stand pat, even though they are leaders in their respective fields.

It is that entrepreneurial spirit and the willingness to take chances which makes them industry leaders. TWICE congratulates all of our Retail Excellence Award Winners, and we also congratulate our voters who made some great choices!