Thirty-five years have passed since the initial issue of Mass Market Retailers rolled off the press. During that time, the editors of MMR have unfailingly named a Retailer of the Year each January. Our editors had much to choose from, for our definition of mass market retailers included grocery, chain drug and discount retailers. The selection, though never easy, nonetheless inevitably came down to a few practitioners of the retail art whose accomplishments were difficult to overlook or underplay.

This year we have broken precedent by naming not one but two Retailers of the Year. We made this decision simply because we determined that two practitioners of the retail art were simply too good to overlook. You have only to turn to page 1 of our current issue to discover who the chosen retailers are.

The first is a proven master of the retail art, a company that has routinely placed at or near the top of its class year after year, decade after decade. That retailer is, of course, Target Corp., arguably among the two finest retailers to open their doors for the first time in the early years of the second half of the 20th century. (The other retailer that can realistically lay claim to the title of finest retailer is, of course, Walmart, a company that has elevated the retail art to levels never before achieved.)

So the choice of Target was not a difficult one. Neither was our selection for the other Retailer of the Year designation. Our choice: H-E-B, for reasons too numerous to be confined to a few paragraphs on our editorial page.

Those retail authorities who really know about the pitfalls of mass retailing — and there are relatively few — fully understand what H-E-B has meant to the mass retailing community. Indeed, if that significance were the sole criterion for selecting a winner in the Retailer of the Year category, H-E-B could honestly lay claim to the title, with little pushback from other contenders. Truth is, H-E-B has, in challenging other mass retailers, made them better at what they do — or attempt to do.

Indeed, of all H-E-B’s many remarkable accomplishments, perhaps most impressive is that this company decided, some time ago, that there is more than one way to come to market. Virtually alone, H-E-B has made the one-size-fits-all concept obsolete, by replacing it with a retail model that attempts, almost always successfully, to tailor that model to the peculiarities of the customer that market serves.

In itself, that accomplishment is sufficient reason to recognize H-E-B. But there are other reasons as well, reasons the retailer’s many competitors have come to recognize, rue, marvel at and seek to duplicate, often with indifferent results. Interestingly, H-E-B has never sought headlines or recognition. As a result, other, sometimes larger retailers have received more accolades. But the groups of people who mean most to H-E-B have unfailingly recognized its achievements. Those groups, in ascending order of importance, are the retailer’s supplier partners, its workforce and its customers.

It is this last group that is especially noteworthy. Indeed, if a credible survey were undertaken to determine how many, and how frequently, shoppers switched grocery stores, H-E-B would happily, but not surprisingly, finish at the bottom of such a list. In truth, one of H-E-B’s core characteristics is that the retailer, and its thousands of staffers at all levels throughout the company, know just how capable this company is.

So it is that the editors feel more than vindicated for naming H-E-B one of the publication’s two Retailers of the Year for 2020. Goodness knows, these editors have made more than enough bad calls over the years. It’s refreshing to know that this first call of 2021 was an especially good one.

Congratulations H-E-B — and, of course, Target as well.