31 Standout Brands Whose Resilience in the Face of Challenges Inspired Innovation

The business of retail has changed on virtually every front, from how products are made to how they're marketed, sold and distributed. The mix of players has also evolved, with legacy brands sharing prominence with nimble upstarts—and learning a thing or two in the process. This year, in recognition of the steep challenges brands face—and the many innovations that their resilience has inspired—we're honoring the standouts in the industry with our first annual Adweek Retail Awards. Executives from a number of the winning companies, including Ulta Beauty, Lerer Hippeau and Mack Weldon, will be sharing their insights live and in person at our Challenger Brands Summit March 4-5 in New York. We hope to see you there. —Kristina Feliciano Best Returns Solution Returnly Returnly offers what it describes as a one-of-a-kind fin-tech solution that provides instant credit at the point of return—meaning customers who use Returnly Credit get their replacement item before they've returned the original, says Eduardo Vilar, the company’s founder and CEO. This unusual approach is helping Returnly snag new customers such as Everlane while holding on to long-standing clients like Outdoor Voices and Untuckit. The company’s success in 2019 was bolstered by the launch of its international returns solution, which helps shoppers return items online from anywhere in the world. The service also includes localized tax, duty information, tracking and instant refunds and exchanges. In addition, Returnly is now offering an instant gift exchange program for Shopify Plus merchants, which allows recipients to purchase a preferred item before they return the original gift. —Richard Collings Best Third-Party Marketplace Poshmark One of Poshmark's most notable moves in 2019 was launching Home Market in June, a new vertical that allows the buying and selling of décor. This key new offering helped drive sales last year and will continue to do so in 2020, the company tells Adweek. Generating buzz for Poshmark earlier in the year, tennis champion Serena Williams joined its board and became a seller, a bit of a coup for the marketplace. The company also continued to innovate, debuting Posh Remit to collect and remit sales taxes on behalf of users, making it easier for them to do business. The tool was unveiled 10 months after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that states can force ecommerce companies to collect and remit sales taxes. Equally interested in what happens offline, Poshmark organizes get-togethers across the country to foster a community among its users, including its annual gathering PoshFest. Poshmark today boasts 50 million users, 7 million of which are sellers, demonstrating the company’s scale and diversity. —Richard Collings Best Payments Provider Stripe Stripe processes hundreds of billions of dollars per year for retailers that range from cosmetics company Glossier and home-furnishings purveyor Wayfair to luxury consignment outfit TheRealReal. Its suite of services has earned the confidence of investors, with Stripe raising $250 million in additional funding last year from firms such as General Catalyst and Sequoia, which in turn gave it a pre-money valuation of $35 billion. The capital is being invested in international expansion, expanding Stripe's products and extending its enterprise capabilities. In particular, the company built programmable infrastructure for international money movement, the Global Payments and Treasury Network, and added services such as "Connect" and "Billing." It also introduced new products like Stripe Capital, to give businesses easier access to money, and the Stripe Corporate Card, to manage spending. —Richard Collings [kickout id="1" label="carvana"] Best Auto Retailer Carvana Imagine a vending machine, only it's eight stories high and sheathed in glass. And rather than snacks and beverages, it holds 27 vehicles ready for delivery. This patented innovation is a reality thanks to Carvana, and the company continues to refine it. In January, Carvana unveiled the latest version of its car vending machine in Miami, the 24th of its kind. Not only does it conveniently deliver cars; it also makes for great advertising. It's no wonder then that Carvana has become the fastest-growing automotive retailer in the U.S. The key to its success? “It’s really just focusing on giving consumers control and introducing technologies to increase transparency,” says Ryan Keeton, Carvana’s co-founder and chief brand officer. The company is attempting to replace the traditional automotive dealership with its online car-purchasing and financing platform, making the process more convenient and cheaper for consumers. It doesn’t hurt that Carvana has a seven-day return policy for its vehicles and is expanding its soon-as-next-day delivery service, which is now in 161 markets across the U.S. As of the end of the third quarter, Carvana was more than doubling its sales year over year, with net sales for the first nine months of more than $2.8 billion. —Richard Collings [kickout id="2" label="popeyes"] Best QSR Brand Popeyes Popeyes could sum up last year in two words: chicken sandwich. Or perhaps three: chicken sandwich war. Its uber-popular new offering and the marketing behind it—including picking a social media fight with competitor Chick-fil-A—transformed the sleepy chicken chain’s business, boosting comparable sales by a whopping 34% in the fourth quarter. So great was the demand that Popeyes reintroduced the sandwich in November on “National Sandwich Day” after running out of supplies in late August following the initial launch. In a competitive restaurant landscape, that kind of sales growth is no mean feat, especially when the brand in question is nearly four decades old and already has hundreds of locations. Who knew a bun, some mayo and pickles and a piece of fried chicken could be so powerful? Popeyes continued its streak of creative use of social media into January, awarding a Canada Family Feud contestant $10,000 after she incorrectly answered that Popeye’s (in this case the sailorman) favorite food was chicken instead of spinach. She was thinking of the chicken chain and not the character—which has been a fixture of the public imagination since 1929. —Richard Collings Best Retail Reboot Lululemon Lululemon had a strong 2019 and continued its momentum into the holiday season, with comparable sales growth during the fourth quarter in the high teens, mirroring its performance in the third quarter. This upswing defied an emerging trend of softening sales among apparel retailers in general during the holidays and resulted in the company revising fourth-quarter guidance upward. With an eye toward achieving its goal of quadrupling its overseas business by 2023, the purveyor of apparel inspired by a yoga lifestyle recently brought on board new chief brand officer Nikki Neuburger. The newly created position should bolster the retailer’s marketing, creative, communication and sustainability efforts, all of which are part of her purview. Neuburger is the former global head of marketing for Uber Eats, a role in which she led the introduction and expansion of that business to 36 countries, and spent 14 years at Nike—making her particularly suited for the role at Lululemon. The retailer also made some important shifts, exiting the children’s clothing business and—recognizing that stores catering to both men and women performed better—closing its stand-alone men’s stores. But Lululemon hasn't abandoned men, and menswear will continue to be a centerpiece of the brand's growth strategy. The men's category alone accounted for revenue growth of 38%, nearly double women’s, and there are plans to double sales of men’s apparel by 2023. —Richard Collings Best Overall Customer Experience Wegmans Grocery is one of the most challenging segments in retail, with thin margins and fierce competition from rivals like Amazon and its Whole Foods division as well as Walmart. But Wegmans, a family-owned regional enterprise started in the early 1900s, is as relevant as ever. In 2019 it continued to sweep up accolades, ranked No. 1 in the Harris Poll Reputation Quotient among most visible companies and was named the third best place to work by Fortune magazine. In 2018, Market Force Information crowned Wegmans America’s Favorite Supermarket. To boost its visibility and relatability, the company also donates millions of pounds of foods to local food banks and supports a number of charitable initiatives. Wegmans is also expanding, opening its first location in New York City in Brooklyn and building its third regional distribution center in Virginia to increase its East Coast presence. Over the past four years, the chain has grown from 88 stores to 101. What attracts customers and feeds growth are, in part, old-fashioned tactics like offering a huge selection of products, combined with first-class customer service, all within an atmosphere of a European open-air market. —Richard Collings [kickout id="3" label="walmart"] Best Online Grocery Store Walmart Online grocery is still nascent—a 2019 Gallup poll found 81% of Americans never buy groceries online—but it is expected to nearly double from $19.9 billion last year to $38.2 billion in 2021. Of the various executions underway, Walmart is undoubtedly at the forefront. Look no further than its autonomous delivery pilots, voice order functionality and even an in-refrigerator delivery option. More than 3,000 Walmart locations offer online grocery in the U.S., and the retailer employs over 50,000 personal shoppers for the service. Its physical locations, from which customers can pick up orders, is another advantage over online-only competitors, which is likely why the retailer highlighted the service in its first-ever Super Bowl ad. “Customers more and more are viewing time as a new form of currency,” a Walmart spokesperson says. “We’re always out to help our customers, and that means we need to now help them save time and money. … The grocery pickup and delivery piece of the equation is about serving customers where they are.” Coincidentally, Walmart says 90% of Americans live within 10 miles of a store. —Lisa Lacy [kickout id="4" label="white claw"] Best Wine and Spirits Brand White Claw You couldn’t swing a dead cat in the summer of 2019 without hitting some hard seltzer. And White Claw, which was reportedly so popular there was a nationwide shortage, can make a compelling argument as the consumer favorite overall. Morning Consult ranked it as one of the fastest-growing brands of 2019 and noted it performed especially well pretty much across the board, from Gen Z to boomers. And, according to data firm IRI, White Claw continued to dominate hard seltzer in January 2020 with a 62% dollar share. “While the hard-seltzer segment delivers on consumer trends toward convenience, wellness, flavor and variety, White Claw has an edge with its unprecedented brand affinity among consumers,” a spokesperson says. Hoping to build on that brand loyalty, White Claw plans to introduce “several flavor innovations” later this year. —Lisa Lacy Best Overall Online Retailer Amazon No surprise here: While CEO Jeff Bezos humbly notes third-party sellers accounted for 58% of gross merchandise sales in 2018, his onetime book-selling venture has transformed into the 800-pound gorilla of ecommerce, now controlling 38% of the U.S. market, per figures from market research firm eMarketer. In Amazon’s Q4 2019 results, Bezos announced the company's Prime program has grown to 150 million members as it continues to raise the bar for competitors with innovations like one-day shipping. The notoriously tight-lipped retailer provides few glimpses behind the curtain otherwise, but data from online analytics firm SimilarWeb shows Amazon.com had more than 2.3 billion visits in January 2020, and ecommerce intelligence firm Marketplace Pulse says Amazon’s product assortment numbers more than 500 million—but the firm stopped counting a few years back because “the catalog has grown so big that measuring incremental growth no longer indicated a meaningful insight.” —Lisa Lacy Best Customer Experience Platform Kustomer Kustomer was founded in 2015 by two customer-service veterans who wanted to move away from traditional case numbers to create a more holistic experience for brands and customers alike. With Kustomer, brand representatives can access a customer communication record that vp of marketing Gabe Larsen likens to a Facebook timeline. That means no matter how a customer reaches out, reps are up to speed. Now the startup is focused on tapping into AI to eliminate menial tasks like password resets and to better support reps, including making sure the right customer is talking to the right agent. Kustomer also plans to delve further into customer relationship-management capabilities. “It’s being able to have a more true customer relationship-management tool that utilizes multiple data sets from disparate data systems that have been siloed," says Larsen, "and bringing them to the agent to empower them to delight the customer.” —Lisa Lacy Best Cross-Border Commerce Technology Flow As global ecommerce grows—to a projected $6.5 trillion by 2023, according to data provider Statista—so, too, do cross-border transactions, which are expected to account for nearly one-quarter of global ecommerce by 2022. But catering to customers in international markets comes with unique challenges, including navigating the variety of currencies, taxes, payment methods and shipping, to name a few. Enter Flow, which says it was founded in 2015 to “empower businesses to market, sell and ship to online consumers globally, and to enable consumers anywhere to have simple and easy local shopping experiences.” In 2019, the company expanded its range of payment methods and enhanced its logistics capabilities to include global multidistribution-center fulfillment as it continues to seek to make cross-border commerce frictionless. —Lisa Lacy Best Buy Now, Pay Later Solution Affirm Financial technology company Affirm is positioning itself as a safer alternative to credit cards, which Affirm CMO Greg Fisher says are “incentivized to keep you in debt.” Affirm offers qualified shoppers transparent terms on payment plans of three, six or 12 months and no late fees, which, in turn, helps consumers better determine which purchases are really worth it. “Thinking about consumers today, they’re looking for transparency,” Fisher says. “The new generation coming up wants personalization.” Affirm's payment option is now available at 4,000 merchants. What’s more, because customers feel more comfortable buying what they really want, Affirm is driving an increase in average order value, which is now approaching $700. —Lisa Lacy [kickout id="5" label="medmen"] Best Cannabis Retailer MedMen While MedMen has endured some recent lows amid the departure of CEO Adam Bierman, it’s also experienced plenty of highs. Last year, for instance, the cannabis retailer served over 1.2 million customers from all 50 states and more than 100 countries, amounting to 2 million transactions. Year-over-year revenue grew 227% to $130 million. During the summer, the company debuted a delivery service in California and its first-ever loyalty program—MedMen Buds—which now boasts more than 250,000 members. Adweek named the retailer’s two-minute “The New Normal” spot, directed by Spike Jonze, among the best cannabis marketing campaigns of 2019, suggesting the only thing in danger of going up in smoke is you know what. —Paul Hiebert Best Consumer Electronics Retailer Best Buy Despite the odds, Best Buy just keeps getting better. In late 2019, the retailer’s stock hit an all-time high of nearly $89, up from around $54 at the beginning of the year—an increase of over 60%. Part of this lift was due to quarter after quarter of better-than-expected sales, which were supported by a focus on healthcare technology and amassing more than 2 million subscribers to its Geek Squad Total Tech Support program. Just prior to the recent holiday season, the consumer electronics retailer also debuted free next-day delivery on thousands of items from headphones to espresso machines, showing that it's here to compete against the Amazons and Walmarts of the world. —Paul Hiebert [kickout id="6" label="harrys"] Best Men’s Grooming Retailer Harry’s The Federal Trade Commission's recent move to block Edgewell Personal Care from acquiring Harry's speaks to the young DTC brand’s ability to grow big—fast. Founded in 2012, Harry’s got its grooming products on Target’s shelves in 2016, followed by Walmart in 2018. With plans to further expand its in-store presence later this year, Harry’s has recently extended its product offerings to cover hair care with sculpting gel, texturizing putty and 2-in-1 shampoo and conditioner. “Although we were born online, we’re proud to call Harry’s an omnichannel men’s care brand, serving guys where they want to shop,” Jeff Raider and Andy Katz-Mayfield, co-founders and co-CEOs of Harry's, tell Adweek. “With customer experience top of mind, we’re dedicated to helping men enjoy each day a bit more by providing them with products that they actually like to use.” —Paul Hiebert [kickout id="7" label="target"] Best Overall Brick-and-Mortar Retailer Target Target has had a year of hitting the bull's-eye. It’s remodeled more than 700 stores and opened 100 small-format retail locations in urban neighborhoods. It debuted food-and-beverage brand Good & Gather, giving the company over 40 of its own private-label lines. Its new rewards program, Target Circle, went nationwide and now boasts more than 50 million members. And, perhaps most important, its share price hit an all-time high. “Target’s success is grounded in listening to our guests—and they’ve made it clear that they want us to be inspiring and easy to shop,” says Rick Gomez, Target’s chief marketing, digital and strategy officer. “With our easy fulfillment options, from order pickup to drive up to same-day delivery with Shipt, it’s never been faster or easier to get your Target run done.” —Paul Hiebert [kickout id="8" label="trader joes"] Best Overall Grocer Trader Joe’s One sign of a healthy company is that its employees are happy to show up for their shift. In 2020, Trader Joe's ranked No. 14 on Glassdoor's annual list of Best Places to Work, up from No. 23 the year prior. While Trader Joe’s is largely known for its friendly in-store service, this past year the grocer also demonstrated its ability to be a good neighbor. In 2019, the grocer removed nearly 6 million pounds of plastic from its packaging and donated nearly $384 million worth of food and beverages to those in need. These efforts accompany another year of growth, as the company introduced hundreds of new products and opened over 20 new stores, including its 500th location. —Paul Hiebert Best POS System Square If Square’s purpose is to empower sellers of all sorts to start, run and grow their businesses, then consider that objective one step closer to achieved. In the past year, the point-of-sale provider has partnered with the Washington Nationals to allow fans to order and pay for food from their seat, and expanded its reach by debuting Square for Restaurants in the U.K. and Australia. In its most recent quarterly earnings report, the company stated it processed $28.2 billion in payments across its system—an increase of 25%. “This past year, we’ve grown to serve a wider array of greater diversity sellers with our hardware and software, so that no matter when and where sellers want to sell their products—we have a solution for them,” says the company. —Paul Hiebert Best Fulfillment Technology ShipBob If a growth rate of 3,326% over the past three years sounds impressive, then be impressed by ShipBob. In 2019, the Chicago-based fulfillment provider supported more than 3,000 brands, which shipped millions of parcels to more than 100 countries around the globe, while doubling its fulfillment-center square footage. The firm’s proprietary warehouse management system helps it bring order to the increasingly complicated world of ecommerce, too. “As we push the industry forward to stay ahead of what direct-to-consumer brands and their customers expect today, we are building what they will demand tomorrow,” says a company spokesperson. —Paul Hiebert Best Shipping and Logistics ShipStation 2019 was a banner year for ShipStation. The shipping software platform’s victories include opening a U.K. office, increasing its employee count by 24% and growing its partner network—Alibaba and NetSuite, among others—to more than 300 members. The company also added tens of thousands of new merchants. “We’re proud of the growth we’ve achieved in 2019 and look forward to keeping up this momentum so our users can continue to invest time into what matters most to their business—producing products their customers will love,” says Andrea McFarling, vp of marketing at ShipStation. Next up: a possible expansion into third-party logistics and fulfillment. —Paul Hiebert Best Food and Beverage Brand Impossible The meat substitute was one of the buzziest brands of the past year, rolling out its protein-like product that tastes like meat, bleeds like meat and looks like meat to a number of beef-centric chain restaurants across the country, including Burger King and White Castle. An even clearer sign of the brand's impact: The Center for Consumer Freedom paid for a Super Bowl spot suggesting that Impossible's ingredients might be suspect—inspiring Impossible to parody the ad on social media, proving there's no substitute for a good old-fashioned beef. —Diana Pearl Best Streetwear Retailer Champion In the 1990s, you couldn't cross the street without spotting a pair of Champion sweatpants. But the hype over the brand's sportswear died down once the aughts hit, and Champion lost some of its mass appeal. Perhaps due to a growing appreciation for "athleisure" or a major dose of '90s nostalgia in the past few years, it's become a favorite brand once again—and gained a fresh veneer of cool in the process. The sportswear brand has teamed up with buzzy companies like Supreme and Vetements on collaborations that have streetwear fans swooning. Sales were up 11% last year, with estimates for 2019 sales hitting $1.9 billion. It's an impressive revitalization, particularly when you consider that last year, Champion celebrated its 100th birthday. —Diana Pearl [kickout id="12" label="universal standard"] Best Women’s Fashion Retailer Universal Standard Five-year-old Universal Standard is often dubbed the world's most size-inclusive retailer because it carries sizes 00 through 40, a range few other brands can match. The company brings its style-for-all approach to the masses not just with its own garments but through partnerships with major brands like Adidas, Rodarte and more. "Part of our mission at Universal Standard is to really bring this change to the world," says co-founder and chief creative officer Alexandra Waldman. "Globally, we’d like to see all brands creating this type of change, where it becomes about accessibility and not about size." Beyond helping brands to expand their size ranges, Universal Standard has also expanded into brick and mortar, with a storefront in New York's SoHo neighborhood where customers can host events, free of charge. —Diana Pearl Best Wellness Retailer Goop What was once Gwyneth Paltrow's personal newsletter is now a booming business worth $250 million. What unites Goop's endeavors—beyond its famous founder—is a focus on wellness and clean beauty, which it carries through to its stores, both online and physical. Goop sells a curation of its own private-label products, from supplements to skin care, as well as a slew of other wellness-related products, from a meditation pillow to a wide variety of vibrators. Much has been made of Goop's at-times "woo-woo" approach to wellness, but the brand's impact cannot be denied. Goop's reach goes far beyond its retail, with Netflix show The Goop Lab With Gwyneth Paltrow and event series In Goop Health helping to spread the Goop gospel to the masses. —Diana Pearl Best Venture Capital Company Lerer Hippeau The New York-based venture fund has invested in nearly every direct-to-consumer brand you've heard of: Allbirds, Bark, Everlane, Glossier, Goby, Lola and Rockets of Awesome, among others. Lerer Hippeau is focused on early-stage investments and New York-based companies. And it's already had a big win in 2020: Portfolio company Casper became a public company in January, marking one of the first major DTC IPOs. And since Lerer Hippeau's investment in Casper came early on in the company's life, the firm also had reason to pop the champagne. —Diana Pearl Best Fulfillment Service Provider Boxed.com Boxed.com brings the beauty of a wholesale club online, packaged in a millennial-friendly brand. The company has been increasingly updating its fulfillment centers across the country, incorporating more automation and autonomously guided vehicles that can transport goods across warehouse floors more quickly, alleviating the need for workers to manually find items. Boxed.com has also been building out a growing advertising business. “We can not only show you who clicked, but who they were, what they bought and what the real-time ROI was on that spend,” CEO and co-founder Chieh Huang noted last year at the Brandweek: Challenger Brands event in New York. —Diana Pearl Best Ecommerce Platform Shopify With more than a million merchants signed up—including brands like Allbirds and Kylie Cosmetics—Shopify has cemented its place as a leader in ecommerce. The third-largest online retailer in the U.S., it reached the $1 billion revenue mark in 2018 and continued to see success in 2019, with $2.9 billion in total sales during Cyber Weekend. “Our goal is to close the gap between technology and commerce so that our one million merchants can focus on selling their products and building lasting relationships with their customers,” says chief product officer Craig Miller. —Ann-Marie Alcántara [kickout id="11" label="ulta"] Best Beauty Retailer Ulta Beauty Operating since 1990, Ulta Beauty has become a serious competitor in the makeup-retail space, with more than 1,200 stores across the U.S. and a membership program boasting 33 million users—representing a 75% increase since 2015. When Kylie Jenner wanted to bring her popular makeup line, Kylie Cosmetics, to the brick-and-mortar world, the beauty mogul chose Ulta Beauty. “The unique offering and experiences we give our guests every day have been key to driving our success, helping us become the largest beauty retailer in the U.S. and one of the top 20 fast-growing retailers in the world,” says chief marketing officer Shelley Haus. To solidify its connection with customers, Ulta Beauty also offers salon services like hair and makeup and lets people try different cosmetic looks via its augmented-reality features. —Ann-Marie Alcántara [kickout id="9" label="Mack Weldon"] Best Men’s Fashion Retailer Mack Weldon Three months into 2019, Mack Weldon, founded in 2011, opened its first store at The Shops at Hudson Yards in New York—and that was just the beginning of a big year for the brand. Mack Weldon went on to sell its three millionth pair of underwear and five millionth product overall, and added more than 150,000 new members to its loyalty program, Weldon Blue. It also added six new products, from pajama pants to a WarmKnit flannel shirt, to its offerings. This year, Mack Weldon plans on rolling out more brick-and-mortar shops, as well as expanding into other retailers like Neighborhood Goods and Nordstrom. “In many ways," says founder and CEO Brian Berger, "it feels like we are at the very beginning of what we see as huge market potential for this brand.” —Ann-Marie Alcántara [kickout id="10" label="pop up"] Best Pop-Up Pop Up Grocer While some grocery stores are changing the produce experience by bringing robots to its floors, Pop Up Grocer is reimagining the entire experience as a traveling grocery without a permanent retail outpost. The so-called floating pop-up grocery store recently opened its Los Angeles location in February after rotating through two different concepts in New York, and has tailored its West Coast assortment accordingly. The L.A. shop showcases local favorites Brightland, an olive oil brand; Magic Spoon, a cereal for adults; and Highly Likely, which provides baked goods and cold brew. In April, Pop Up Grocer will open a fourth location in Austin, Texas. So far, the brand’s seen more than $740,000 in revenue and donates 5% of its profits to a community cause. —Ann-Marie Alcántara Best Overall DTC Brand Rent the Runway In September, the brand hit a snag with its Rent the Runway Unlimited service, which accounts for more than 75% of the company’s business—when it had logistical issues in delivering items to customers after switching to a new warehouse system. But Rent the Runway has since bounced back, and that resilience is due in no small part to the appeal of its core offering. Rent the Runway's most “engaged” users wear rentals more than 120 days a year. The company has expanded into new categories, like home, ski and travel, and has launched new initiatives, such as its Rent the Runway Closet Concierge in partnership with W Hotels to give women a chance to rent clothes for conferences and other events on the go. —Ann-Marie Alcántara Best Security/Anti-Fraud Solution Kount Brands are facing a myriad of issues today, particularly in the realm of consumer trust, as more data breaches occur. That’s where Kount, a fraud-prevention company, comes in. With more than a decade of experience, 6,500 customers and 50 payment providers, Kount has provided fraud protection for more than 32 billion annual interactions, analyzing across 2.7 billion fraud signals per transaction. Kount’s Identity Trust Global Network, powered by AI, ensures its customers like Chase, PetSmart and Staples receive fraud prevention and creates personalized consumer experiences that reduce events like account creation fraud and chargebacks. —Ann-Marie Alcántara Best Retail Analytics Company ShopKeep For thousands of small businesses across the U.S., ShopKeep provides a point-of-sale system that does more than manage checkout. With ShopKeep, business owners can quickly add discount codes, track inventory and ensure employees schedules are managed correctly—data that’s necessary to grow and scale as a company. Founded 12 years ago, ShopKeep continues to accumulate more customers, with over 335 million transactions in 2019—a 60% increase from 2014. In 2019 alone, ShopKeep saw more than $8.5 billion in transactions, a 75% increase from 2014. ShopKeep has more than 25,000 customers nationwide, helping businesses ranging from The Juice Box to Sydney’s, a restaurant and catering company. —Ann-Marie Alcántara