Cover Story: The 100 Fastest Growing Retailers 2010-2011

What follows is ROI's first annual listing of the fastest-growing retailers for the 2010 to 2011 fiscal year. Click on the Related Content link below for the full list. And as an added bonus, check out the fastest growing 100 retailers ranked by website traffic growth by clicking the Related Content link below.

We know that you're all interested in how your competition is doing, and since we hadn't seen a true ranking of cross-channel retailers year-over-year after a lot of research, we decided to roll up our sleeves, polish up our Excel spreadsheets and do it ourselves!

Here's what we did: First, we searched Yahoo Finance for all of the public retail companies in the United States. Then we went to the financial section of each company's website and found their 2010 (or in some cases 2011) net sales numbers. After we figured out the percentage change year-over-year, we ranked each company in ascending order and listed the top 100. We've also included some sidebars below that highlight specific companies on the list.

We believe that now is as good a time as any to compile this list. With retail sales increasing for the 10th straight month in April — according to numbers released by the National Retail Federation last month — there's evidence that retailers are on the front lines of an economic recovery. We're almost postive that their numbers will be even better next year, when we plan to do our second annual ranking.

If you have any questions about our list or our methodology, please feel free to email me at 
mcampanelli@napco.com. — Melissa Campanelli

#1 Ascena 
Retail Group, Inc.
Reflecting a trend we've seen in consumer spending shifting to more value-conscious purchases and brands (see the growth of the dollar store sector), Ascena Retail Group, parent company of value-focused women's and tween girls apparel brands dressbarn, maurices and Justice, is the top growing public retailer for the past year.

Based in Suffern, NY, Ascena Retail Group's brands have an extensive brick-and-mortar store presence throughout the country: dressbarn offers casual, career and special occasion fashion apparel and accessories at value prices for women ages 35-55, operating 838 stores in 47 states; maurices offers casual and career apparel and accessories for fashion-conscious women ages 17-34, operating 758 stores in 44 states; and Justice offers trend-right apparel and accessories at value prices for tween girls ages 7-12 via 891 stores in 46 states, Puerto Rico and Canada. All three brands have an e-commerce website.

Here are some highlights from Ascena Retail Group's 2010 fiscal year, according to its website:

• comparable store sales at Justice, maurices and dressbarn were up 17.5 percent, 6.1 percent and 6 percent, respectively;
• net earnings increased from $66,572,000 to $133,378,000 year-over-year; and
• 918 new stores were either acquired or opened. — Joe Keenan