2012 Hall of Fame: Jay Buchanan

Figuring out how to be a big retailer while maintaining the personal values that matter most to consumers is always difficult. There is a long list of stores that have tried but failed, but Jay Buchanan has managed to strike that balance at Nebraska Furniture Mart.

Even before the recession, when customers were already time-starved but not as dollar-conscious as today, Buchanan, electronics division director, and his team were re-thinking NFM's brick-and-mortar layouts. The stores are mammoth but far from sterile. "They have soul," said Buchanan. "It's that extra ingredient where it doesn't feel like a corporate experience. It's taking technology products and making them appear as heroes, making them digestible."

That design approach has resonated so well with NFM's customers and vendors that there is a 1.9-million-square-foot Dallas store in the planning stages and due to open in 2015. While details are still being finalized, its half-million-square-foot electronics showroom, just as at other NFM locations, will house multiple single-vendor stores-within-stores. NFM's store layouts are a blend of departmentalization and adjacency, with a series of diagonal main drive aisles that pull customers through the store without overwhelming them.