Spiegel marked its recent 150th anniversary by continuing its legacy of reaching out to customers with products and services that have a positive impact on their lives.
By Jim Harris
Spiegel has touched the lives of millions of people during its 150-year history. The company’s close relationship with its customers extends back to its origins, but truly took a step forward in the early 20th century, when it became known for its extremely liberal credit policies. This included not charging interest for credit and extending credit lines that were quite large for their time.
Advertisements proclaiming “We Trust The People!” and “The People Should Get The Credit” attracted millions of Americans to order from its catalog, which at one point had more than 200 million copies in print.
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Shikatani Lacroix Design Inc. relies on a deep understanding of consumer behaviors to assist its clients.
By Bob Rakow
For Shikatani Lacroix Design Inc., it’s all about the moment of purchase. The Toronto-based strategic design agency delivers branding solutions that “strike an emotive chord with consumers,” founder and President Jean-Pierre Lacroix says.
Shikatani Lacroix believes that a brand must capture a consumer’s imagination and heart at the moment of purchase. Yet that opportunity is fleeting. The agency’s goal is to help companies capture it, Lacroix says. Shikatani Lacroix works with clients to increase traffic, generate sales, boost monthly transactions or shift brand perceptions, Lacroix says. The agency offers a variety of services including brand strategy and engagement, corporate identity, design innovation, digital experiences, environmental design, naming, packaging design and place branding.
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With locations stretching through five eastern Canadian provinces, Michael Rossy Ltd. is positioned for further expansion of its variety store concept.
By Eric Slack
The Rossy story is all about seizing opportunity and fulfilling dreams. When Syrian-born Salim Rossy immigrated to Canada in 1910, he opened a general store near Saint Laurent Boulevard in Montreal. He had 10 children, and all of them carved out successful careers in Canada’s retail sector. One of his sons, Michael Rossy, opened his first store more than 50 years ago, creating the Michael Rossy Ltd. company and its Rossy chain of stores.
“Today, Rossy is known as your family store and known for great value at great prices,” Store Operations Coordinator Denis Portelance says. “We have grown to 80 stores in the provinces of Quebec, Newfoundland and Labrador, Ontario, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, and we have more than 1,400 employees.”
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Nicole Miller leads in the fashion world because it always follows its own path.
By Chris Petersen
Success in the world of fashion comes from being able to react to trends just as easily as you shape them, and for more than 30 years Nicole Miller has been at the forefront of women’s fashion for that very reason. With a broad base of upscale specialty retailers carrying the Nicole Miller brand, women around the world have been able to get their own versions of Miller’s designs, which have been worn by tastemakers including Beyonce, Jennifer Anniston and Angelina Jolie.
A graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design and l' École de la Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture Parisienne in Paris, Miller has become world-renowned for her combining of fine art with couture technique. But in fact she was creating styles that caught the fashion world’s attention even before she founded the Nicole Miller brand with CEO Bud Konheim in 1982. In addition to being found at upscale retailers around the world, Nicole Miller has two brick-and-mortar locations in New York City’s Soho neighborhood and West Hollywood, Calif.
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Miami Home Centers sets itself apart from big-box home improvement stores by offering the personal touch of service and unique, exclusive items.
By Stephanie Crets
Miami Home Centers might not be the biggest home improvement store on the block, but if a customer is looking to find an exclusive or unique item, they need look no further. Since 1959, Miami Home Centers has served southern Florida residents with four locations in Miami Beach, South Miami, Pinecrest and Tamiami, providing a convenient place to purchase home improvement products, while also serving contractors and businesses throughout the area.
Under the direction of second-generation President Dan Hitchcock Jr., it is now a complete home center with the expansion of its home décor department and Benjamin Moore paint department. Its kitchen and bath showroom has been expanded as well, and includes decorative hardware and lighting on display.
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Lifechek Drug celebrates 25 years of being the largest independent chain of pharmacies with 24 stores throughout the southwest Texas area.
By Stephanie Crets
Celebrating more than 25 years in business, Lifechek Drug is the largest independent chain of pharmacies with only one owner in the United States. Bruce Gingrich opened his first Lifechek Drug store in 1990 after receiving his pharmacy degree; the contract for the store was finalized the same day he got his pharmacy license.
He had gone back to school after pursuing several other ventures for the sole purpose of owning his own store. “I decided I wanted to do something where I own my own business and kept what I make,” Gingrich says. “And the market for drug stores was really good at the time.”
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Jennifer Adams Worldwide is helping millennials create their own definition of what home feels like to them.
By Chris Petersen
Lifestyle and design guru Jennifer Adams has been dedicated to helping people “love coming home” for many years, but she knows “home” means something a little bit different to everyone. What defines “home” for the baby boomers or generation X isn’t necessarily the same for the up-and-coming millennial generation, and as such Jennifer Adams Worldwide, Inc. has turned its focus to developing lifestyle products and concepts that appeal to this powerful demographic and helping them express their own definition of what it means to love coming home.
As CEO and chief creative officer of the company that bears her name, Adams oversees a lifestyle brand that is as noteworthy for its breadth and depth as it is for its philosophy of “effortless style.” Adams honed her sense of style and design while growing up with a large family in a modest home, where she learned to “do much with little.”
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iStore provides the accessories for the technology that people depend on each and every day.
By Chris Petersen
Imagine if human beings woke up as a species one morning and discovered they had an extra set of arms. To say that this would have a disruptive effect on the apparel and accessories industries would be putting it lightly, and there would suddenly be new opportunities for companies that could provide accessories for these new appendages.
It sounds outlandish, but in a way it has already happened. Human beings have developed new appendages, but these are of the technological variety. iStore CEO Joel Teitelbaum says mobile devices like smartphones and tablets have become so ingrained into their users’ lives that they have become like a new set of arms, and iStore was created to fill the growing need for accessories for these new artificial appendages.
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