LEADER LOGIC LTD

Richard Peters, Founder 

richardpeters@leaderlogic.ca 

(416) 471-1956

DELIVERABLES: Revitalizing under-performing businesses, developing leaders, enhancing competitive position, new revenue opportunities, strengthening brands, streamlining operations & growing revenue/profit. 

TRACK RECORD FOR OPTIMIZING OPERATIONS 

EXPERIENCE: Leadership roles with national, regional & global market leaders plus entrepreneurial experience as business founder as well as mentoring, managing & advising start-ups & early stage organizations. 

INDUSTRY BACKGROUND: Media, software, digital technology, finance, consumer goods, food & social enterprise.less

LEADER LOGIC LTD

Richard Peters, Founder 

richardpeters@leaderlogic.ca 

(416) 471-1956

DELIVERABLES: Revitalizing under-performing businesses, developing leaders, enhancing competitive position, new revenue opportunities, strengthening brands, streamlining operations & growing revenue/profit. 

TRACK RECORD FOR OPTIMIZING OPERATIONS 

EXPERIENCE: Leadership roles with national, regional & global market leaders plus entrepreneurial experience as business founder as well as mentoring, managing & advising start-ups & early stage organizations. 

INDUSTRY BACKGROUND: Media, software, digital technology, finance, consumer goods, food & social enterprise.less
 

Sustainable food chains make business sense and consumers happy

AGRI-FOOD SUSTAINABILITY: Sustainable food chains make business sense and consumers happy

Customers want food they can trust and expect retailers to do the ethical and environmental thinking for them

Responsible supermarkets are now making moves to ensure the sustainability of all of the fish they sell. Photograph: Graeme Robertson

In a year when horsemeat contamination and food waste have made the headlines, consumers are more conscious about the operation of the food system. Everyone wants food they can trust, but today's shoppers increasingly want more than that, and expect retailers to embed ethical and environmental sustainability in all of their products.

This was one of the messages that came out of a recent progress report by Sainsbury's, two years into its 20x20 sustainability commitments programme.

"Customers want us to act for them and ask the question and take the actions they would expect," said Justin King, chief executive ofSainsbury's, speaking at the launch of the report on 20 November.

"We can help them by taking on that responsibility and solving complex problems for them. Ultimately, the power of 24 million customers shopping with us will always mean we can make a big difference more quickly."

This mainstreaming of sustainability is a response to customers no longer seeing the issue as a bonus feature, sold under a label, such asFairtrade, with a price premium to match. Ethical and environmental sustainability is increasingly seen as fundamental, and consumers expect supermarkets to make it easy for them to live by those principles.

"When surveyed, most shoppers say that, on key ethical food issues, they want their supermarket to make those choices for them, before the product even reaches the shelf," says Kath Dalmeny, policy director of the charity Sustain, which campaigns for better food and farming.

Indeed, shoppers express surprise when they discover their trusted supermarket is selling endangered fish, for example. As Dalmeny says: "The more responsible of the major supermarkets are now making principled and cost-effective moves to ensure the sustainability of all of the fish they sell, to reduce the environmental footprint of products, and to pay fair prices to farmers in poor countries."

One of Sainsbury's commitments under the 20x20 plan, for instance, is for all of its fish to be independently certified as sustainable. It is also about to launch its own set of standards, run by an independent body, covering all of the 35 key raw materials in its supply chain that may not be fully covered by existing standards, such as Fairtrade, the Rainforest Alliance and the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC).

"MSC and Fairtrade are great and we want to be able to say our standards are independently audited across these 35 or so raw materials," said King.

This trend towards embedding sustainability is being seen in other sectors, too. Unilever, for example, introduced a Sustainable Living Planin November 2010, which it describes as "a driver of everything we do so that each time a consumer chooses one of our products, it improves their life, their community and the world we all share".

"Environmental sustainability is starting to be seen as more than an optional extra," says Duncan Williamson, food policy manager at WWF UK. "There are increasing numbers of businesses who are seeing the environment as core to their future business models."

Businesses also see sustainability as a way of engaging with their customers, and the issue of tackling waste lends itself well to this. Food waste is something consumers are increasingly conscious of and want to act on. In early November, the Waste & Resources Action Programme (Wrap) revealed that, since 2007, the UK has reduced avoidable household food waste by 21%.

Many consumers clearly care about this and it may seem counterintuitive for a supermarket to encourage consumers to waste less if it means they'll buy less. But, according to Alice Ellison, environment policy adviser at the British Retail Consortium, this is an important way of creating value. That means selling affordable food, "but also making sure we can make the most of it", she says.

Ellison cites a range of steps taken by retailers to reduce household food waste, from providing clear storage advice and recipe ideas to offering more portion sizes and designing packaging that extends a product's shelf life. "These have helped to drive significant reductions in the amount of food and drink we throw away," she notes.

According to Sainsbury's 20x20 update, the supermarket's Make Your Roast Go Further campaign, in January 2013, was one of its most successful of the year. This substantiates King's argument that there is a business rationale in helping consumers waste less.

"Helping customers spend less by buying and consuming everything they buy is in our long-term interest, if we help you do that better than our competitors … It's not good for us to have someone looking at a bag of salad in the bin thinking 'I was tempted to buy that at Sainsbury's, but I wasted it'."

Brand owners have realised that embedding sustainability into their supply chains and brand propositions is important to their survival, as well as giving customers what they want. The supply and demand sides are coming together under the sustainability agenda, and that's why it makes sense to embrace it.

"It's not just about CSR [corporate social responsibility]," says Williamson. "It's about resilience, and their medium- and long-term future. Companies are recognising that the core elements of the food system – water, land, ecosystem services and oil – are becoming scarcer and will cost more. A sustainable food system will need responsible business."

Posted by Bruce MacDonald

10 trends tracked by JWT that will shape consumer mindset and behavior in 2014

December 4, 2013

Posted by: Ann Mack - New York in North America

Today we released our ninth annual forecast of key trends that will drive or significantly impact consumer mindset and behavior in 2014 and beyond.

In this year’s report, we see how consumers are both welcoming and resisting technology’s growing omnipresence in our lives. For many, technology serves as a gateway to opportunity and an enabler of hyper-efficient lifestyles, but those who are most immersed are starting to question its effect on their lives and their privacy. One result is that more people are trying to find a balance and lead more mindful, in-the-moment lives.

Our forecast also puts a spotlight on the growth of immersive experiences; the accelerating shift to a visual vocabulary; the new appeal of imperfection; and the rise of telepathic technology, which will enable brands to better understand minds and moods and react in a very personalized way.

The full report—in which we cover each trend in detail, highlighting what’s driving the shift, how it’s manifesting and what it means for brands—is available here.

JWT: 10 Trends for 2014 – Executive Summary from JWTIntelligence

Read more: http://www.jwtintelligence.com/2013/12/10-trends-shape-consumer-mindset-behavior-2014/#ixzz2nwsQhCcw

10 Sustainable Business Stories Too Important to Miss

by Andrew Winston

Somehow it’s already year-end, a time to look back and try to make sense of what’s happened. Creating any “top” list of stories from 12 months is nearly impossible. But as I’ve done for the last 4 years, I’ll attempt to summarize some of the latest stories about the big environmental and social pressures on business, and how some innovative companies are dealing with them.

This year, like recent years, saw some continuation of big trends: with a few exceptions, the international policy community keeps failing to come to a meaningful agreement on climate change; carbon emissions just keep rising; transparency is increasingly unavoidable and keeps gaining technology-enabled traction; pressure from big companies on their suppliers keeps going up.

So what’s really new this year? Let’s dive in.

The Big Picture

1. The science of climate change gets clearer: the IPCC lowers our carbon “budget.”
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued its wonky, but readable, Summary for Policymakers (a precursor to the full 2014 report). The report expresses “near certainty” that humans are causing climate change and calculates how much more carbon we can “safely” put in the atmosphere and hold to the 2-degree warming threshold that the world’s leaders have agreed to (and some scientists are suggesting that even the 2-degree threshold is too high).

The short story is that we have less room than before. PwC’s annual Low Carbon Economy Index report concluded that we must lower global carbon intensity (the amount of carbon produced for every dollar of GDP) by 6% per year until 2100, a percentage point lower than last year’s report recommended.  On the upside, similar calculations from WWF and McKinsey suggests that this pace of change –they endorse a 3% reduction in absolute emissions per year through 2020 – will actually be very profitable.

2. The reality of climate change and pollution get scarier: Australian heat, Philippine devastation, and Chinese air pollution all break records.
The models and carbon budgets aside, the weather this year got even more extreme, helping make the case for action in a more visceral way. In January, Australia’s meteorologists had to add new colors to weather maps to deal with temperatures ranging up to 54 degrees Celsius (129 degrees Fahrenheit). And in November, after the Philippines faced the most powerful storm ever recorded to hit land, some climatologists suggested we add a “Category 6” to the top end of the storm scale.

While it’s impossible to tie any single weather event to climate change, the complicated correlation got clearer this year. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration concluded that “high temperatures, such as those experienced in the U.S. in 2012, are now likely to occur four times as frequently due to ­human-induced climate change.”

In parallel, China’s air became, at times, dangerous and unbreathable. Several cities experienced days with small-particle air pollution running 25 to 40 times higher than the World Health Organization’s recommended limit.  This may seem like a regional story, but it has global ramifications for manufacturing, consumer goods, the energy industry, and much more.  The world’s most populous country is taking increasingly drastic action, such as slashing Beijing’s new sales quota for cars by 40%.

3. The clean tech markets keep growing fast: three of the world’s biggest economies — the U.S., Germany, and Walmart — add lots more renewable energy.
In October, 99% of the new energy added to the grid in the U.S. came from renewables (solar alone was 72%). Germany keeps breaking its own records, with wind and solar providing 59% of the country’s energy one sunny day in October. And America’s wind power has quadrupled over the last 5 years; wind is now generating enough electricity to power the state of Georgia.

In addition, electric and hybrid cars are about 4% of US auto sales now, a doubling of market share in the last couple of years. Companies are increasing investments as well. Walmart, already the largest private sector buyer of solar power in the US (with more solar capacity than 38 U.S. states), committed to a 600% increase in renewable energy by 2020.

4. Deep concerns about labor conditions, wages, and equity take root: From tragedies in Bangladeshi apparel factories to minimum wages in the U.S.
Travesties like the death of more than 1100 workers at the Rana Plaza apparel factory in Bangladesh are increasingly unacceptable to the buying public. And it’s getting harder to hide how connected we all are to these workers. When the news hit about the loss of life, front pages around the world included the names of major brands that depended on the factory to make their goods. A startup called Labor Voices is now collecting information on working conditions in Bangladesh and elsewhere in a shockingly simple way: by giving workers a number to call from their cell phones, which everybody now has.

European companies are doing more than U.S. peers, at least publicly, to commit to higher safety standards. Swedish retailer H&M recently said it would pay a “living wage” to 850,000 workers in its supply chain by 2018 – a somewhat vague, but important announcement.  And to be fair, while U.S. companies haven’t been as clear, Walmart has contracted with Labor Voices to gather data on its 300+ Bangladeshi suppliers and subcontractors.

On the other side of the ocean, though, Walmart, McDonald’s, and many others are facing increasing challenges about minimum wages. Watch this space, as it seems unlikely that this debate will go away.

5. Food and food waste gets more attention, debate, and innovation: Can cows save the world, or should we make meat in labs?
The level of concern about how we’re going to feed 9 billion people by 2050 is rising. Food waste also got more attention: a UN report estimated that the world throws out $750 billion worth of food annually.  Food is too big a topic to summarize, but a few stories grabbed my eye this year. Fenugreen, a smart startup that won the Sustainable Brands Innovation Open in June, sells sheets of paper made with natural ingredients that fight food decay – they can keep fruit and veggies from going bad 2 to 4 times longer than they would last normally.

On a different front, Biologist Allen Savory made a splash with a much viewed TED talk about how grazing cattle in a way that fertilizes land and sequesters carbon can fight desertification and climate change. His theory is under attack, at least to the extent that his method could make a significant dent in our climate problem. Wherever the science on this ends up, it’s an important discussion that brings more focus to systems thinking and to the nexus of food, energy, and water.  Finally, a quirky, totally different meat story was fascinating. Billionaires Bill Gates and Sergey Brin are funding experiments to grow meat in labs, a process that – once people get past any “ick” factor – could greatly reduce the footprint of producing meat-based protein.

What Companies Are Doing

6. (Some) businesses get off the sidelines in the climate policy fight: Hundreds of companies sign onto the Climate Declaration.
Started by the NGO Ceres, as part of its Business for Innovative Climate & Energy Policy (BICEP) initiative, the Climate Declaration is a broad statement of intent that acting on climate will be good for our economy and society.  A large range of leading companies have signed on including Diageo, ebay, EMC, Gap, GM, IKEA, Intel, Microsoft, Nestle, Nike, Portland Trailblazers, Starbucks, Swiss Re, Unilever, and many more.  The Declaration itself is directional and not as specific as what Ceres and a subset of these signatories advocate for as part of BICEP’s work (like pricing carbon and aggressive energy efficiency programs). But it’s a very good start and demonstrates that the business community is not against tackling climate change.

In related news, Accenture produced a fascinating survey of 1000 CEOs around the world, in which a surprising 83% agreed that government should play a critical role in enabling the private sector to advance sustainability. And 31% even supported “intervention through taxation.” In a world where business generally fights all regulations and government interventions, it’s astonishing that one third of global CEOs basically said, “tax us.”

7. Companies are aiming higher, for themselves and their partners: Dell, Coca-Cola, Lego, and many more set very aggressive environmental and social goals.
Goals are not the same as outcomes but they matter a lot – they set the bar within sectors, driving competition and performance.  As part of its 2020 Legacy of Good Plan, Dell said that it’s aiming to get a 10-fold multiple of good (reduced footprint, for example) from its technologies versus the impacts of making them (mimicking BT’s earlier 3:1 “Net Good” goal).  More specifically, the company pledged to reduce its greenhouse gases by 50% and product energy intensity by 80%.

Coca-Cola launched its own 2020 goals including reducing value chain carbon emissions by 25% (per drink), recovering 75% of bottles and cans, and replenishing 100% of the water the company uses. And Lego just announced its intention to use 100% renewable energy by 2016.  A few companies have already made incredible progress, including Diageo, which, I reported earlier this year, cut its North American GHG emissions by nearly 80%.

In fact, 75% of the world’s largest companies now have multiple environmental and social goals in place (see my new website, www.pivotgoals.com, a searchable database of 2500 environmental and social goals set by the world’s largest companies). In addition, my research shows that more than 50 of the top 200 companies have even set carbon goals in line with PwC’s 6% per year reduction recommendation.

A few companies have begun to extend their goals to their suppliers, a form of what I’m calling “de facto regulation.” Walmart is phasing out 10 toxic chemicals in the products on its shelves, and HP set a carbon reduction goal of 20% for its supply chain.

8. Sustainable companies are winning the talent wars: Unilever ranks 3rd in LinkedIn’s list of in-demand employers.
Just consider LinkedIn’s top 20 most in demand companies (in order): Google, Apple, Unilever, P&G, Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon, PepsiCo, Shell, McKinsey, Nestlé, Johnson & Johnson, BP, GE, Nike, Pfizer, Disney, Coca-Cola, Chevron, and L’Oréal. The tech companies make sense given the platform (and they’re cool brands). But the rest are perennially in-demand employers, such as big consumer brands and top destinations for MBAs (McKinsey) and engineers (Shell).

But what’s surprising is Unilever’s rank — for a company not nearly as well known as the others, it came in just behind two of the hottest, most valuable companies in the world, and ahead of much better known brands like Disney, Nike, and Coca-Cola. Executives at Unilever credit their ranking to the company’s known leadership on sustainability. It’s hard to argue the point.

9. Systems innovation starts to take root: NIKE, NASA, USAID, and the Department of State create LAUNCH.
LAUNCH is an initiative to identify and accelerate innovations that help solve global problems with water, health, energy, waste, and systems. This program is new so it’s unclear what the impact will be, but it’s an interesting and indicative story for two reasons. 

First, look at the partners — what a weird, wonderful mix of business, government, and scientific organizations. Second, the goal is really systems change, and if we’re going to solve the mega challenges in our midst, we need to work across value chains and traditional lines.

10. Better tools for companies to assess “materiality” get closer: SASB releases its first sustainability accounting standards.
The Sustainability Accounting Standards Board has been plugging away, drawing together executives from the world’s largest companies to develop the right sets of questions – specific to each sector – that will help leaders identify which environmental and social issues are really material to their business. We’re very early in this journey, but SASB produced the first set of guidelines for one sector (health care). Watch this space.

2014 and Beyond

• Will the divestment movement continue to gather steam and put significant pressure, either financial (unlikely) or moral (much more intriguing), on fossil fuel companies?
• Will all the talk about building a circular economy gain mainstream acceptance?
• Will we get better at valuing natural capital (and will companies and markets care)? It certainly garnered lots of attention this year, with new estimates of the damage the global economy does to natural assets (trillions), new tools to measure natural capital, and an important new book from former Goldman partner and CEO of The Nature Conservancy, Mark Tercek.
• Can challenges to our consumption-driven model go gain currency? Patagonia continues to launch programs like its Responsible Economy initiative and a backlash to Black Friday, “Worn Wear,” which suggests that we should enjoy what we already own.
• Will the resilience push take hold? New York City released a $20 billion plan to get the city ready for more extreme weather — will companies embrace the risk-reduction benefits of different thinking and planning?
• Finally, why haven’t more companies followed some of the recent sustainability leaders? Paul Polman at Unilever stopped providing quarterly guidance a few years ago so the company could focus on real value creation. And Microsfot and Disney remain really the only two big companies charging their own divisions a carbon fee (yes, as CDP recently reported, and the New York Times put on the front page, 29 large companies now use some kind of internal pricing for carbon. But most of these are “shadow prices,” in use for years, not actual fees. Why has the pace of change lagged the urgency of our mega challenges? Will more than a small number of companies embrace a much deeper change to business as usual?

So it’s been a mixed year, as I suppose all years are, but I remain optimistic that greater stories of change are coming. Have a very happy, healthy, and sustainable 2014!

Andrew Winston

Andrew Winston is the co-author of the best-seller Green to Gold and the author of Green Recovery. His forthcoming book, The Big Pivot, will be released in April. He advises some of the world’s biggest companies on environmental strategy. 

When Acquisitions Become Drivers of Innovation

 

In the world of technology, companies are increasingly moving beyond growing organically and using acquisitions to enlarge their operations. Some have also made a strategic decision to acquire R&D rather than try to grow innovation in house.

Take for example Apple’s acquisition this summer of Toronto-based Locationary, the venture-backed startup that specializes in location data.  According to a number of market experts, this deal allows Apple – which has its own R&D division – to immediately augment its mapping service so that users can access up-to-date information on local businesses.

Whether the acquirer is Apple, Google or Blackberry, the objective in these acquisitions must be carefully defined. That’s the view of John Banks, who teaches MBA students about M&A at Waterloo, Ontario’s Wilfrid Laurier University. “Regardless of how attractive the deal price or fortuitous the opportunity, it is essential that the impact the acquisition is intended to have on the company’s strategic direction be both understood and realistic for the transaction to be truly successful,” Banks says.

Enterprises that use M&A to supplement their R&D can approach acquisitions in a passive or active way. Those doing a formal search process tend to have access to strong corporate finance skills and are able to apply rigorous valuations and criteria for potential deals. Banks agrees with the value of using specialized expertise: “The assessment needs to be especially meticulous since research shows that this particular aspect of M&A is often characterized by incomplete if not irrational thinking.”

A smaller company is often attractive as an acquisition target because it can have the flexibility of a speed boat that manoeuvers rapidly around larger ships. “There is the ability for a small company to be nimble and to not be hampered by bureaucracy. They can do R&D at a quicker pace and without legacy products,” says Amar Varma, founder of Xtreme Labs, a Toronto-based provider of mobile solutions to businesses. (Varma coached BumpTop prior to its acquisition by Google in 2010.)

The issue for a larger company that chooses to use M&A to develop an innovative product pipeline is the risk of missing the window of opportunity to buy. If the targets are very attractive, they will be acquired. Google bought YouTube and capitalized on gaining a unique business while it was still available in the market.

A common impetus to enter acquisition mode is when the larger company is looking to grow by boosting a product or service offering. Once the target has been identified, it’s all about timing.

Says Varma: “Startups are continually looking for cash. The ability for a startup to obtain cash through customers or investors can significantly impact the upward trajectory of the deal price. This means the acquirer must purchase a startup at the optimal time – before there is too much competition to buy. Often, there is no demand until there is demand.”

When a company uses acquisitions to supplement its R&D, the corporate finance process needs to be highly streamlined and focused on its mission. “In order for an acquisition to go well, there needs to be strategic alignment for the bigger vision of the deal, an appropriate integration plan that minimizes day-to-day disruptions, and consideration for the cultural fit of both companies,” says Haroon Mirza, entrepreneur in residence at OMERS Ventures and co-founder of CognoVision, which was acquired by Intel in 2010.

The period immediately after the acquisition can be challenging, particularly if the small enterprise bought for R&D development has a superior product, as this can cause resentment by the acquirer’s team of employees. The need for cultural fit suddenly becomes startlingly clear. The on-boarding entrepreneurs will need a top executive at the acquiring business to champion the buy.

“It becomes important to keep employees of the acquiree informed about what the acquisition means for them – this can be a confusing time for employees who may feel their jobs are at risk and could consider leaving if they’re not well-informed,” Mirza explains.

Mirza was satisfied with his and his co-founders’ decision to have CognoVision acquired by Intel. “I do agree that an M&A can be a viable alternative to organic growth. For the acquirer, benefits include immediate access to intellectual property, business and technical domain expertise in terms of talent, and also our customers.

“For the acquired company, benefits include gaining access to significantly more resources for R&D, sales and marketing which can accelerate business growth by means of improved sales reach, cost optimization, and increased revenues.”

Jacoline Loewen is a director at Crosbie & Co. Inc., a provider of advice to small and medium-sized businesses. She is also the author of “Money Magnet: How to Attract Investors to Your Business.”

Leaning In: The 10 Fastest-Growing Women-Owned Businesses

BY Jenna Goudreau

Image credit: Shutterstock

 

In the midst of Sheryl Sandberg's popular initiative to empower women in business, it appears more of them are indeed leaning in to grow their businesses. In the U.S., an estimated 8.6 million women-owned businesses contribute $1.3 trillion to the economy and employ 7.7 million Americans, according to an April report commissioned by American Express OPEN, the credit card giant's small business division. What's more, the number of women-owned firms with $10 million or more in annual sales has increased 57 percent over the past decade.

To spotlight some of the major companies owned by women, nonprofit membership group Women Presidents' Organization (WPO) today released its sixth annual list of the 50 fastest-growing women-owned or led businesses in North America. The companies that made the list generated a combined $3.2 billion in 2012 revenues and employ an average of 641 employees each.

"Women are growing very substantial businesses, and not in the traditional areas that you'd expect women to be in," says Marsha Firestone, president and founder of WPO, citing a concentration of manufacturing, staffing and consulting businesses on the list. "Women don't just bake cookies and make crafts. They're starting businesses that can be scaled."


To be considered, the privately held businesses had to have either a female founder with a majority stake or a female leader with some ownership, who runs the company on a day-to-day basis. The companies supplied their revenue figures for the years 2008, 2010 and 2012, and were ranked by revenue growth over that period.

Here's a snapshot of the top 10 fastest-growing businesses and their leaders from the list:
No. 1: Shazi Visram, Happy Family in New York, N.Y.
Launched in 2006, Happy Family makes packaged organic meals and snacks for all age groups. It reported gross revenues of $63 million last year. 

No. 2: Kathy Mills, Strategic Communications in Louisville, Ky.
Strategic Communications provides communication and IT services to business and government clients. Between 2010 and 2012, its gross revenues grew 80 percent to $42 million. 

No. 3: Shelly Sun, BrightStar Franchising LLC in Gurnee, Ill.
The health-care staffing franchisor was founded in 2002 and now counts over 250 locations across the U.S. and $212 million in gross revenues. 

No. 4: Tiffany Crenshaw, Intellect Resources in Greensboro, N.C.
Intellect Resources provides consulting, recruiting and hiring solutions for businesses in the health-care IT market. Its gross revenues climbed from $1.5 million in 2010 to $30 million last year. 

No. 5: June Ressler, Cenergy International Services LLC in Houston, Texas
Founded by Ressler in 1996, Cenergy provides workforce solutions such as consulting and logistics management to clients in the oil and gas industry. It reported nearly $250 million in gross revenues in 2012. 

No. 6: Sue Bhatia, Rose International Inc. in Chesterfield, Mo.
Rose International, an IT professional services and consulting firm, was founded in 1993. Between 2010 and 2012, its gross revenues grew more than 50 percent to $360 million. 

No. 7: Anita Emoff, Boost Technologies in Dayton, Ohio
Specializing in employee wellness, recognition and awards, Boost Technologies reported $17 million in gross revenues last year, up from less than $1 million in 2008.

No. 8: Kathleen Croddick, Suite K of South Brunswick, N.J.
Founded and run by Croddick, Suite K Value Added Services LLC manufactures beauty products such as fragrances, creams and lotions. Its gross revenues grew more than 150 percent between 2010 and 2012 to $13 million.

No. 9: Lani Hay, Lanmark Technology in Vienna, Va.
Lanmark Technology provides professional services such as IT and administrative support to clients in the government and commercial sectors. It reported gross revenues of $35 million in 2012.

No. 10: Ranjini Poddar, Artech Information Systems LLC in Cedar Knolls, N.J.
With gross revenues of nearly $350 million, Artech is the largest women-owned IT staffing company in the U.S., according to WPO.

Wal-Mart Vs. Amazon: World's Biggest E-Commerce Battle Could Boil Down To Vegetables

Source: Challenges In Agri-Food And Supply Chain
    
Wal-Mart Stores WMT -1.34% and Amazon.com AMZN -0.02% are both such enormous companies that there isn’t even a fitting cliché to clumsily describe their battle for e-commerce supremacy. There isn’t a David in this fight. If Wal-Mart’s Goliath, Amazon is Godzilla.

Wal-Mart's gunning for Amazon's customers away from the cash register, online.

Both chains dominate their historic areas of expertise. Once just a bookseller, Amazon is now the biggest online store on the planet. Wal-Mart is the world’s largest retailer of any kind, its $469 billion 2012 revenues dwarfing Amazon’s $61 billion.On the web, though, Wal-Mart lags. The Bentonville, Ark. chain doesn’t break out its U.S. online sales in its financials, but e-commerce chief Neil Ashe recently said the company aims to do $9 billion of its 2013 revenues on the internet. That’s 2% of its overall sales.

Right now, with Wal-Mart’s brick and mortar business booming, it might not matter much, but it will in five years, say experts at market research firm Nielsen.

According to Nielsen, e-commerce will gain more ground than any other segment of the retail industry by 2017, with a compound annual growth rate of 11% each year. Supercenters of the kind pioneered by Wal-Mart come in second, with their growth rate projected at only about half that of web shopping.

Wal-Mart is doing all it can to catch up with Amazon online, copycatting some of the Seattle retailer’s most successful tactics.

They’re trying out lockers, one of Amazon’s hallmarks, allowing shoppers to order items online and pick them up in stores — crucial for the Wal-Mart demographic, a quarter of whom reportedly do not use debit or credit cards or even have a bank account.

They’re dabbling in same-day delivery and even going a step further than Amazon by attempting to crowdsource package drop-off among customers. They’re investing in web technology to improve both their site’s appearance and ease of navigation.

What else can Wal-Mart possibly do to win the web? Nielsen’s Todd Hale has one answer. “E-commerce is growing at 11% a year, but sales for consumer packaged goods online — food, groceries, everyday items — are more like high double digits, almost 20%,” said Hale, SVP of consumer and shopping insights. “This is the space Wal-Mart has to go after: perishable items. That’s where they need the infrastructure.”

Today’s Wal-Mart isn’t ready to sell fruit and vegetables online. Same-day delivery is still only available in a handful of states. Its grocery hub on the web, Walmart To Go Delivery, remains in beta.

Hale believes Wal-Mart should look to smaller regional businesses like FreshDirect and PeaPod as a blueprint as it rolls out its consumer goods delivery service. And he sees the big box giant’s site as a shoo-in future destination for non-perishables like diapers as long as its infrastructure allows shoppers to set up regularly scheduled deliveries, a service popular on Diapers.com.

Amazon is already a step ahead with its Amazon Fresh same-day delivery, currently available in the Seattle area but soon headed for California. “Amazon is already building an infrastructure for perishables,” said Hale. “Groceries will be the battleground coming to the forefront.”

Kantar Research vice president of retail insights Anne Zybowski agrees to an extent, but warns that Wal-Mart must make sure its web offerings extend outside the grocery aisles.

“It’s not one item at a time, it’s who wins the entire basket or shopping cart of consumables,” she said. “A big piece of the basket is groceries, but there’s also healthy and beauty care, for example.”

Zybowski added that Wal-Mart has made significant strides online in recent months, not just in prettying up its site but making shopping easier for customers who might not want to actually pay via the internet.

“They’ve improved inventory visibility — a customer can make sure an item is in stock by checking Wal-Mart’s site, then they can go to their nearest store to buy it,” she said. “The challenge now is to get people thinking of them as a low-price leader online and off.”

Morningstar MORN -0.65% director of consumer equity research R.J. Hottovy isn’t sure Wal-Mart’s infrastructure is what’s holding up its web growth but its enormous and growing network of brick and mortar outlets — 4,000 in the U.S. and counting.

“Wal-Mart’s done an okay job online, but Amazon’s done a great job,” Hottovy said. “They can undermine the price of a lot of their competition. Without a physical storefront presence and overhead, they can pass that savings directly to consumers.”

Hottovy added that Wal-Mart will have to do more than invest in infrastructure to win the battle of the web behemoths. They’ll have to woo customers who are loyal to Amazon for good reason. “Amazon has tied up price, convenience, sales, and good customer service,” he said. “That’s a powerful combination.”