Retail Superstars: Inside the 25 Best Independent Stores in America

How small, one-of-a-kind businesses can break through among giants

Megachains like Walmart, Starbucks, Home Depot, and The Gap attract Americans to thousands of outlets by offering a large selection of goods and services. But this doesn't mean that independent stores can't compete with the big guys-and win. Retail expert George Whalin identifies and explores twenty-five highly popular and profitable independent stores from around the country. Unlike the mom-and-pops of yesteryear, these businesses embrace technology and innovation, generate word of mouth, and turn their size into an advantage. They include:

• ABC Carpet and Home in New York City
• Powell's City of Books in Portland, Oregon
• The Junkman's Daughter in Atlanta
• Jungle Jim's International Market in Fairfield, Ohio

Readers will be inspired by how these independent stores are thriving and take away lessons they can apply to their own businesses.

This contact lens solution contains hydrogen peroxide, which reacts with the microbial that sticks into the contact lenses to give off oxygen and water. Here, the hydrogen peroxide both acts as oxidant and reductant. It is oxidised to oxygen (reductant) and reduced to water (oxidant) at the same time ( H202 -> H20 + O2 ). Hydrogen peroxide is a very powerful oxidising agent, even stronger than potassium permanganate and chlorine. From the picture, we can see that in the contact lens container, bubbles of O2 are being formed as a result of hydrogen peroxide reacting. After contact lenses are being treated by H2O2, it will need to be neutralised and stored for 6 hours before it can be used.

After the first store didn't have them in three deliveries during this week, I went to another store. No luck, either. But the owner offered that his brother would bring them over from his store in the other part of the town. He (the brother) closed his store at 2pm and went downtown before 'my' branch closed at 3pm. Here they are.

Me, Myself & Paris is author Ruth Yunker's droll pastiche of her days, free and unaccompanied, in Paris. Three years in a row she rents an apartment, stays for six weeks, and takes on Paris, half resident, half visitor. She is a short attention span tourist, a wide-eyed voyeur, and irreverence saves the day when the chips are down. Her stories are about bonhomie and savoir-faire, American style, while treading the hallowed and slippery cobblestones of Paris.

It's about every day errands, and sorties into dutiful sightseeing. It's about run-ins with grocery store cashiers and metro ticket agents. It's about desperately trying to speak French. It's about attempting to emulate the chic, windblown Parisian woman wearing no lipstick, while Ruth wouldn't be caught bare lipped outside the boudoir.

She conquers the metro, no mean feat for a Californian glued to a car. She hears ghosts in cathedrals, and smells bread toasting every morning across the courtyard. She learns to make correct change without her reading glasses. Comes to understand that direct eye contact is a flagrant disregard of manners, even when she most needs a hug.

Me, Myself & Paris is what Paris looks like, feels like, smells like, tastes like, to an American woman, free and unfettered, sense of humor and bonhomie alive and well, alone and loving it, in the most beautiful and temperamental city in the world.