The Epic Tale of RetailWire and Its Co-Founders Can Now Be Told
RetailWire broke the retail trade media mold when it was founded 22 years ago. This article briefly accounts for the site’s history (facts may be in dispute) and the co-founders behind it.
The RetailWire story goes back years before its founding when two creative types (Rick Moss and Santi Briglia) and an up-and-coming sales guy (Al McClain) worked for the video division of a trade publishing company serving the grocery industry.
The premise was simple. Produce videotaped store tours of supermarkets and create CPG company-sponsored category reviews and mail VHS tapes (see Wikipedia for details on this ancient tech) to grocery chain headquarters executives.
The three were happy until around the time the company was sold to Grayson Bane*, a vulture capitalist. Mr. Bane’s playbook called for buying companies at a discount, firing workers to boost profits and selling quickly before the business collapsed from a lack of financial and human resources.
Mr. Moss, Briglia, and McClain resigned at various points rather than participate in this horror show. A core RetailWire philosophy was born from this experience. Never work for or with a-holes.
Their free agent status provided RetailWire’s co-founders with other ideas, including communicating through a new delivery system called the world wide web. Today we call it the Internet.
The first days were challenging for the co-founders and their brand-new editor-in-chief (me). Dial-up transmission meant the new team’s visual thinkers needed to forget about attaching images (gifs) and video (.avi, .mov, .rv, and .viv) to articles.
It’s hard to explain dial-up connections, but perhaps the following joke will illustrate: “I have a meeting with the person who invented the progress bar during the dial-up era. He will be here in three hours and 12 minutes. No, he’ll be here in six hours and seven minutes. No, he’ll be here….”
RetailWire also aimed to build a community of people in and around retailing who were interested in breaking down silos and open to a diversity of opinions. It took a while, but the discussion forum that RetailWire is known for came together with the addition of BrainTrust panelists (thank you), who shared their insights on a wide range of retailing and related topics. Had the co-founders or their editor been prescient, they might have coined the term social media in 2002. Instead, the term was later popularized after the social networking site FaceMash reinvented itself as Facebook in 2004.
Those early discussions led to the development of the RetailWire “golden rule” that welcomes all to express their opinions on the site as long as they don’t engage in shameless self-promotion or take cheap shots at others.
Time moved on, and so did technology. Steve Jobs and Apple debuted the first iPhone model in June 2007. Mr. Jobs called the new device “a revolutionary and magical product that is literally five years ahead of any other mobile phone.” This new device, he said, was a cross between an iPod (see Wikipedia), a phone and an Internet communicator.
This new device and the later Android competitors brought new production opportunities and challenges. RetailWire needed to create a mobile-optimized experience – check. It needed to be concise (you can read our articles in under two minutes) – check. It needed to continue building the BrainTrust and community that makes RetailWire unique – check.
Expanding bandwidths have opened up new technological opportunities for RetailWire. Videos, which weren’t considered in the days of “You’ve got mail,” are no problem today. The site’s annual Christmas Commercial Challenge included eight videos in the 2022 final.
Earlier this year, the co-founders told staff that RetailWire had been sold. They took great pains to find a buyer who would maintain RetailWire’s editorial independence, design excellence and sense of community. Grayson Bane-types were not considered and Chase Binnie acquired the site.
For myself, Tom Ryan, Matt Stern and other RetailWire long-timers, we thank Rick, Al and Santi.
*Name changed to protect the individual who may disagree with this opinion piece’s personal characterization of him and his business philosophy.