Welcome to the inaugural 20 Coolest Retailers report, a list of Australia’s most innovative and daring retailers of 2019.

To make the cut, we decided, the retailer had to be an Australian brand. It needed to offer something fun, fresh and different and a great retail experience either online, offline or both. And it needed to have a loyal community of not just customers, but fans. We looked at both large and small retailers in a wide range of different categories, from food and fashion to beauty and sport.

You don’t have to be in-the-know to understand that there was a lot of depressing retail news around the world when we launched this report – closures, restructures, redundancies, waning consumer confidence and so on. Creating this list highlighted the many amazing Australian businesses out there, and the great retail stories we should be putting in the spotlight in the future.