Cover Story: The 100 Fastest-Growing Cross-Channel Retailers

We're proud to bring you our annual list of the 100 fastest-growing cross-channel retailers for the 2011 to 2012 fiscal year. To compile the list, we searched Yahoo Finance for all the public retail companies in the U.S. and Canada. Then we visited the financial section of each company's website and found their 2011 (or in some cases 2012) net sales and compared them to the previous fiscal year's net sales. After we figured out the percentage change year-over-year, we ranked each company in descending order for our top 100. We've also included some profiles that highlight specific companies on the list. Click on the "Related Content" link below to access a PDF of the full list.

Another key metric cross-channel retailers look at when analyzing their successes (or failures) is web traffic. As a result, Retail Online Integration asked Compete, a Kantar Media company that provides monthly website visitation numbers for the world's top brands, to take our list of the 100 fastest-growing cross-channel retailers and provide us with December 2010 and December 2011 online visitation numbers for those brands, as well as the percentage change. For the list, ROI gave Compete all of the multiple domains owned by each retail company (e.g., Amazon.com includes Soap.com, Diapers.com, etc.) and it rolled them up into the numbers provided below. Click on the "Related Content" link below to access a PDF of the full list.

The retail industry is facing some trying times. New economic realities have resulted in a new order of buyers who are more price-conscious and careful about the purchases they make.

Shoppers expect the best merchandise at the lowest price, and they want it shipped as soon as possible (for free) or available at whichever retail location is closest to them. Despite all of this, consumers are still shopping. They've demonstrated the desire to spend on discretionary items, helping spur economic and retail sales growth in the first quarter of 2012, according to the National Retail Federation (NRF).

In fact, an earlier Easter holiday combined with unseasonably warm weather throughout much of the country contributed to retail sales in March increasing 0.8 percent seasonally adjusted from February and 6.6 percent unadjusted year-over-year.

Which brings us back to our list. Here we celebrate retailers that increased sales despite tough economic times. Enjoy!