From administrations and horse meat to new formats and the march of multichannel, 2013 has been a busy year for retail. Rebecca Thomson looks back at the most significant moments

2013 was the year multichannel innovation, supply chain and delivery truly came to the fore. There was a depressingly high number of administrations on the high street, but there was hope too as consumers slowly returned to spending and confidence inched up.

The spotlight was heavily trained on the internal mechanics of retailing – while 2012 was all about the glitzy Olympics marketing campaigns, in 2013 retailers were forced to look long and hard at their supply chains as the horse meat saga and Bangladesh tragedy prompted questions for the industry.

Fulfilment was the battleground, while own-brand took on a new importance with the launch of Aldi’s and Tesco’s tablets. Read a round-up of who had a good year, a bad year, what lessons were learnt, how multichannel accelerated in grocery and which stories were Retail-Week.com’s most popular.

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