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The National Shoe Retailers Association named Tom Luck, owner of Lucky Shoes in Akron, Ohio, its 2010 Retailer of the Year. The company has 13 stores, including three Lucky Shoes, eight New Balance stores and two Stride Rite Stores, and employs more than 100 people.

The award was presented during NSRA’s February 2010 conference by Alan Miklofsky, NSRA CEO and chairman of its board of directors, as well as owner of Alan’s Shoe House, a multi-location company headquartered in Tucson, Arizona. More than 450 retailers attending the conference gave Luck a standing ovation.

Lucky Shoes was founded in 1919. Luck got his start in the family business at the age of 5, “helping out” in his father’s store. Tom’s son John is the fourth generation Luck in the business, a certified pedorthist who supervises a team of seven professionals offering pedorthic services to Lucky customers. As CEO, Tom Luck has emphasized customer service “from the heart” as a focal aspect of business; it was his decision to introduce pedorthics to the service offerings, which also include measuring feet, fitting shoes, educating customers on shoe features, and providing gait analysis and computerized fitting assistance.

As a member of NSRA and of its board of directors, Tom Luck is chairman of the vendor relations committee; he has also served on the executive committee and the strategic planning committee, which meets every three years to update the association’s long-term goals and vision. He was named Citizen of the Year in 1992 by the City of Fairlawn, Ohio, and Entrepreneur of the Year by Smart Business Cleveland magazine in 2004. In 2005, he received the American Heart Association’s Distinguished Achievement Award. Two years later, Lucky Shoes was named “the best” place to buy shoes by the Akron-Canton Hot List, sponsored by regional businesses. He is a long-time contributor to the Two Ten Foundation, the University of Akron, and North Coast Community Homes.

“We honor Tom today for his extraordinary vision and for his demonstrated ability to provide skilled implementation and principled leadership every single day,” Miklofsky said in presenting the award. “All of Tom’s abilities are part of his enormous entrepreneurial talent. I personally think that Tom Luck is a guy that has it all, and I am proud to call him my friend.”

In accepting the award, Luck thanked his family and employees for their consistent support and enthusiasm for working at Lucky Shoes and its multiple businesses. “We haven’t changed our core business, which is great service and great value on the best products available,” he told the group. “This company has survived because of the talented people I have the privilege of working with. We have survived and prospered because we keep reinventing ourselves before we need to – we look forward, and we adjust to our customers’ needs and expectations.”

NSRA’s “Retailer of the Year Award” was instituted in 2009. The first recipient was John Schuler of Schuler’s Shoes in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

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