Although NRF’s Annual Retail Industry Awards have existed for years, the three brands honored at Monday’s awards luncheon are quite young. As a result, each recipient is a living example of the constant revolution and evolution of the industry and the facets which continue to change the face of retail.
Brooks Brothers Chairman and CEO Claudio del Vecchio presented three executives with the Retail Innovator, International Retailer, and Gold Medal awards. I could go on and on about how under the direction of CEO John McCarvel, Crocs survived and thrives today sustainably; about how lululemon EVP Delaney Schweitzer has helped build a remarkable team with their Function Means Fashion concept; and how one of this generation’s most innovative CEO’s, Jeffrey Bezos, has catapulted Amazon.com from $510,000 in annual sales in 1995 to $48 billion in 2011. Instead, I’ll let the videos speak for themselves. I will, however, end with this quote that Bezos shared in his acceptance speech, “We like to invent, we like to pioneer, and we like to go into dark alleys that turn out to be wide vistas. And we’re still having fun.”