W.S. Badcock Corporation sells furniture for every room in the house through more than 300 Badcock Home Furnishing Centers and Badcock &more stores in about 10 southeastern states as well as online. Badcock stores also carry appliances, lawn equipment, electronics, mattresses, floor coverings and rugs, bedding, lighting, wall art, and other decorative accessories. Founded in 1904 as a general mercantile store by Henry S. Badcock, the company is in its fourth generation of family management.

Founded in 1977, Uniprix is a growing alliance of independent pharmacy operators who together own Uniprix company. Uniprix has vaulted into the #1 spot in the Quebec drugstore market (ahead of rival Jean Coutu). The chain operates about 390 drugstores under the Uniprix, Unipharm, Uniclinique, and Clinique Sante banners. (With about 360 pharmacies, Jean Coutu is still Quebec's largest chain by revenue.) Drugstores flying the Uniprix banner account for more than half of the company's locations. Many Uniprix locations are superstores averaging 7,500 sq. ft. Unipharm outlets are mid-size neighborhood shops, while Unipharm and Uniclinique are smaller pharmacies adjacent to medical centers and seniors' residences.

Bellacor retails more than 500,000 lighting products and home furnishings from 700 manufacturers through its Web site and Amazon.com's Home & Garden store. The Web site also offers online customers personal shopping, project portfolio, and price quote services. The company sells lighting fixtures such as chandeliers and sconces, and home accessories from bathroom fixtures to mailboxes. Professional builders and remodelers can use the company's Virtual Lighting Showroom, which allows them to customize an online store front under their brand name. The company was a catalog retailer before beginning to sell its wares online in 2000.

Lotte Shopping's department stores offer more than the usual shopping experience. The company is a leading retailer in South Korea with some 30 department and discount stores across the nation. It owns one of the largest retail chains in the country with facilities that are part of vast retail complexes that often include cinemas, shopping malls, hotels, theme parks, and wedding halls. It also has a store in Moscow (opened in 2007). In China, where Lotte Shopping is looking to grow, its 2009 purchase of Times Ltd., an operator of 65 hypermarkets and supermarkets in east China, boosted its retail presence there to about 75 stores. Lotte Shopping, which was established in 1979, is looking to grow overseas.

Founded in 1998, Service Partners acquired some 40 businesses before being purchased itself by Masco in 2002. If you can't stand the heat, try getting better insulation from Service Partners. Through some 55 centers in about 30 states, the firm is a leading distributor of residential fiberglass insulation and related products, including fireplaces, roofing, gutters, shelving, drywall, and acoustical ceiling material. Contractors and home improvement retailers are Service Partners' primary customers. It also runs more than a dozen laminating facilities that produce insulation for use in prefabricated buildings, as well as a training center where contractors learn how to install the company's products.

Louis Brockway and Fred Smith founded their namesake company in 1890. Brockway-Smith has found the right opening to success. Doing business as BROSCO, Brockway-Smith company is a wholesale distributor of millwork products throughout New England. Products, including doors, windows, and specialty millwork, as well as columns, mantels, moldings, posts, and stairs, are sold by a network of dealers in Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Vermont, and Rhode Island. Brockway-Smith operates through four distribution centers in Massachusetts, New York, and Maine. Customers include architects, building materials dealers, and contractors.

Sapp Bros Travel Centers (formerly Sapp Bros Truck Stops) has the usual air, gas, food, but also offers human conveniences such such as laundry rooms, mailbox rentals, private showers, and TV lounges. The company operates a chain of some 15 truck stops -- readily identifiable by the giant red-and-white coffeepot logo -- along interstate highways from Utah to Pennsylvania; with a concentration in Nebraska. Half of the locations also operate service centers, offering oil changes, new tires, and safety checks. Its sister company, Sapp Bros Petroleum, distributes petroleum products in Nebraska and western Iowa. The firm is run by CEO Bill Sapp, one of the four founding Sapp brothers.

Founded in Boston in 1909 by Edward Filene, the company in 2009 was acquired out of bankruptcy by rival off-price retailer Syms Corp. Syms has maintained long-held traditions, such as the annual "Running of the Brides," at 100-year-old Filene's Basement, as well as the Filene's name and many of the company's employees. You don't have to go underground to get to Filene's Basement. The retailer operates about 25 stores under the Filene's Basement and fbSY banners in Massachusetts, New York, and half a dozen other states and the District of Columbia. The stores sell off-price men's and women's designer and name-brand apparel and shoes, as well as jewelry and home goods.

Dunnes Stores has been losing market share to foreign competitors in recent years and is under increasing pressure to cut prices as the Irish economy swoons. Frank Dunne, son of the late founder Ben Dunne, runs the company.The Irish aren't done shopping until they've shopped Dunnes Stores. The largest Irish-owned supermarket and the Second supermarket operator there (behind Tesco), Dunnes Stores offers brand-name and its own St. Bernard-brand grocery items; housewares for every room; and clothing for men, women, and children in about 150 stores in Ireland, the UK, and Spain. Ireland's largest family-owned business.

Founded in 1946, EWM's current incarnation resulted from a series of buyouts, the last of them by the company's own management, led by CEO Philip Day in 2002. In 2005 EWM acquired Inverness-based kilt-maker Hector Russell. Get a taste as well as a wrap of Scotland at Edinburgh Woollen Mill (EWM). A niche retailer specialising in womens and mens wear and traditional Scottish products and gifts, EWM operates some 190 shops throughout the UK. The retailer also operates about 95 tourist shops and more than 25 larger stores that sell apparel, gifts, and other items. More than 30 EWM shops include dining facilities, and more than 10 sell single malts and blended whiskies.

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