| 6/1/2010

Retail

When AutoNation CEO Mike Jackson talks, industry leaders listen. [Photo: Brian Smith]

Whether it’s cash for clunkers, or hybrids, or what Detroit should build, how it should sell it or gas taxes — in short, just about anything to do with buying, leasing, trading or driving cars — Mike Jackson’s opinion carries weight. As CEO of the nation’s largest dealership group, Fort Lauderdale-based AutoNation (Public No. 8), Jackson and the other half of the AutoNation leadership duo, President Mike Maroone, are the nexus between consumers on one side and manufacturers and government on the other. Jackson, who sees his role as bringing the consumer viewpoint to automakers and government, has had more success prodding Detroit about smarter production than in advocating for higher gas taxes or dissuading the government from higher mileage standards.

» Publix Super Markets (Private No. 2) sets the pace regionally and nationally in the grocery business, a quality player that forces the competition to up its game. The employee-owned company promotes from within, innovates in multicultural marketing and products, organic foods and even a restaurant chain. When its president gives a speech on supply chain collaboration, it makes the front page of the industry press. “They’re sort of a role model and also reach out to this cultural milieu that we have in Florida,” says Bart Weitz, executive director of the Miller Retailing Education and Research Center at the University of Florida. Ed Crenshaw, grandson of revered founder “Mr. George” Jenkins, took over as CEO in 2008 of the Lakeland-based grocer.

» Another Florida grocery icon, Winn-Dixie (Public No. 10), has new life under CEO Peter Lynch, an Albertson’s executive who took over in 2004 and led the company into and out of bankruptcy court protection. The resurgent Winn-Dixie will see its clout increase if it can continue to improve.

» Begun by the late Kevin Koenig as a waterbed store and later transformed with the help of his brother and current CEO Keith Koenig, Tamarac-based City Furniture (Private No. 104) is a leader in blended global supply chain management and broke ground this year on what will be the first LEED-certified furniture showroom in the nation in Boca Raton, complete with solar harvesting and LED track lighting. The company also has pioneered the application of “lean” manufacturing processes to retail and distribution. “Our business is so much more efficient and so much better for our lean journey,” Koenig says.

» The other standout in Florida-based furniture retailers is Seffner-based Rooms To Go (Private No. 15), under CEO Jeffrey Seaman, whose father and grandfather were furniture sellers too.

» Frank Brunckhorst, CEO of retail meat products company Boar’s Head Provision Co. (Private No. 28), keeps a low profile with one exception — writing checks for politicians.

» In fashion, Florida influentials include Fort Myers-based Chico’s FAS (Public No. 33), under CEO David Dyer, a former Tommy Hilfiger chief executive, and Jacksonville-based Stein Mart (Public No. 41), which found a way to marry fashion sense and a department store feel with off-price goods. CEO David Stovall Jr., a Belk executive, arrived in 2008.

» In 2011, Gate Petroleum (Private No. 11), the Jacksonville-based gas station, convenience store operator, real estate and concrete company, will see the full-time return of John Peyton when he leaves office as the city’s mayor. He’s the son of founder Herb Peyton, who started with a single gas station. — Mike Vogel