It’s been a busy year for retail, and it has been our pleasure helping our readers keep up with all the breaking news and trends happening in the industry. For one last look back, we’ve compiled a list of the most clicked-on features on Retail Dive. From lists (lots of lists) to predictive forecasts, click on the titles below to catch up on 2014’s most read features.
1. 10 companies winning at retail this year
2014 was a good year for many retailers: Target experienced a comeback of sorts; Apple CEO Tim Cook may have finally stepped out of Steve Jobs’ shadow; and Costco was repeatedly praised for its employee benefits. For these reasons and many, we have compiled a list of retailers that, to put it simply, “won” retail this year.
2. Are these 5 retailers headed for the endangered species list?
Although we asked this question in February, it’s still applicable to all five retailers mentioned in the piece. Each company made headlines in the following months, almost all of them stemming from the faults that landed them on the list in the first place.
3. 8 trends retailers can’t ignore in 2015
From the rise of mobile over the holidays to the success of pop-up shops in otherwise traditional retailers like Nordstrom, the retail trends of 2014 may turn into the absolutes of retail next year.
Even seven months after this feature’s publication, it’s still hard to determine how many of our picks will flourish or flop. We’ll be keeping an eye on these five retail startups to see if they live up to our hype.
5. 9 biggest retail blunders of 2014
We saw and heard a lot of apologies (some sincere, some, well a little less so) from multiple retailers in 2014. Here, we compiled a list of blunders all retailers should avoid in the upcoming year.
6. The ‘best performing’ retail CEOs in the world
Pulled from Harvard Business Review’s annual list of the 100 best-performing CEOs in the world, these eight retail execs all have a legacy of increasing profits and providing shareholders with results.
7. The end of brick and mortar? Think again
From e-retailers dabbling in physical stores to the shift of millennials’ shopping preferences, we saw that brick and mortar was here to stay in 2014.
8. 6 female trailblazers in retail today
Even though only two women made Harvard Business Review’s list of the best-performing CEOs in the world, these female leaders in retail are making waves in the industry with their smarts and business savvy.
9. 7 retail tech startups to watch in 2015
We’re starting to see a theme here…with two startup pieces making the top 10, it’s clear that retailers are always looking for the next best POS system, payment option, or delivery startup to help them fulfill their customers’ needs.
10. How Sears is “aggressively” moving away from the traditional retail model
After reporting its ninth-consecutive unprofitable quarter in August, Sears’ CEO Eddie Lampert promised that the retailer would “aggressively” move away from its traditional operating model to a more “member-centric” model. Whether these changes can or will help the retailer can only be decided in the new year.
