The Seattle Times reports on the decision by the National Retail Federation (NRF) to give Amazon founder/CEO Jeff Bezos its annual Gold Award, noting that "the trade group's selection of Bezos as retailer of the year may be the most surprising one yet when you consider the fierce rivalry between Amazon and the organization's brick-and-mortar base." Bezos is the first online-only retailer to get the award, following in the footsteps of people like Kip Tindell of The Container Store, Terry Lundgren of Macy's, Millard Drexler of J. Crew, and Howard Schultz of Starbucks.

As the Times writes, "No company has done more in the past decade to disrupt the traditional retail establishment than Amazon. It upended the book industry with its Kindle e-reader, then created a tablet for movies, games and other things sold on Amazon. The competitive implications of a mobile device designed to get people buying more from Amazon soon became terrifyingly clear." Indeed, Amazon has even taken an in-your-face approach, suggesting to customers that they use traditional retailers as showrooms, checking out products there and then using their smartphones, tablets and computers to order those items from Amazon.

KC's View: Giving the award to Bezos makes sense. It probably could be argued that it is long overdue. After all, give me the name of another retailer who has had as much impact on commerce and popular culture as Bezos has in the last decade.