Canterbury of New Zealand are both a sportswear brand and retailer (online & at the Westfield Centre.) They are new entrants to Twitter.

www.twitter.com/canterburynz

(Disclosure: They are also a client of the agency.)

My niche rowing shop (direct mail order) isn't on your list

@rowperfect

But maybe you were more keen on the 'mainstream high street'?

R

Please add @guy1067 to Carphone Warehouse.

@carphoneware tends to be the more corporate voice, whilst @guy1067 is more the customer service voice trying resolve issues our customers have had with us.

You've also got: TalkTalk: @talktalktips

I am not at all surprised by the brevity of this list. Back in the late 90s I was advising the Boards of many High Street brands on how to integrate the internet into their business. Many actually refused to believe that the internet had to become a serious part of their business strategy and treated it much like they treat creating their latest poster ad campaign.

Retail Week magazine, last week, published a special report on 'multichannel retail' and unsurprisingly the dinosaurs on the Boards of these large UK High Street retailers were saying the same rubbish they were talking back in the 90s, nothing's changed: the only change will come when the Boards are replaced by a younger generation of more internet savvy business leaders.

It is the small independent retailers that will rise in the UK as they seem more willing to embrace new technology and new ways of communicating with their customers, integrating the web across their whole business.

Graham

Nice work. Our client Riverford Organic are also on twitter @riverford

Chris

www.sensorpro.net | @sensorpro

Some other independent retailers on Twitter:

Wiggle bike shop - http://twitter.com/wigglebikeshop

Wiggly Wigglers - http://twitter.com/wiggled

Espares: www.twitter.com/espares

Big Green Switch is on Twitter providing people with Green tips of the day and also environmental news story updates.

www.twitter.com/biggreenswitch

Thanks for all the suggestions, I've updated the list.

Hi,

Adnams has joined Twitter, and we've also got our Head Brewer, Fergus Fitzgerald, just starting to tweet
Adnams: @adnams
Fergus: @solebear

Thanks, Sarah

We're on Twitter and have been for almost a year.  Check out the comings and goings of moo.com www.twitter.com/overheardatmoo/

Plus there are a number of the employees on as well.

Surprising to see Argos for example not present on this list nor Twitter. Is that just being cautious with new technology or foolish?

I've collected additional data around this list you can download as a .csv from my blog.

Brief facts include:

LOVEFiLM tweets the most per day: 6.1
The Book Depository has been on Twitter the longest: 642 days
Fig Leaves is trying hard to get followers: 0.4 followers to people being followed

If anyone has more time it would be interesting to see the frequency of Tweets br retailer to see if this is picking up as Twitter itself is becoming more popular.

Hi Lisa and Sarah, I've added those to the list.

Mark - I was was just aiming to get a list together so see how many are using it. Just from glancing at the accounts as I added them to the list I can see that some are more active than others.

When I have some more on the list I may follow this up and look at how effectively these retailers are using Twitter.

Coracle Online (www.CoracleOnline.com) uses twitter to communicate with eLearning students around the world. As well as answering queries from students, we send updates on our new podcasts from www.ShippingPodcasts.com and other general information relating to the commercial shipping industry.

Apologies Graham, I didn't mean to say it wasn't useful and have corrected my post... should have read that it was very useful and more useful with a few numbers! Thank you for pulling this together.

No problem Mark, let me know if you pull any more stats together on this.

Hi Graham

Great list.

I've replied via twitter as well but you can add the following:

@Conran_shop

@mydeco

@innocent

@OfficeShoes

@Aleksandr_orlov (compare the market)

thanks

james

I feel very upset that we havnt been added to the list - http;//twitter.com/sillyjokes

Come on Jason you've only got one update from 27th Feb - your company lends itself to some engaging updates, get tweeting!

I'm following you now so I expect entertainment!!

thanks

james

I will do my best James and thanks for following us as well! I hope we can make your experience fun

Slight hijack of this thread but does relate to Twitter. How cheesey is it if a company tries and sells it products or uses discounts via it's twitter feed?

Would it put you off following or does it give you perceived value?

Online dancewear retailer MyUnitard.co.uk is also on Twitter : @myunitard. We're not using it that much at the moment (waiting for a new website to become live), but we're gearing up.

Competitor to us - but Waterstone's ( @waterstonesltd) has started tweeting, not a lot of updates to date.

You've listed Penguin althought a good user of Twitter i wouldn't say they were really a retailer - there are a lot of good publishers using it from Ebury, Canongate, O'Reilly, Snow Books, Faber & Faber, Orbit, Bloomsbury etc etc

Jason,

In response to your question about whether promoting special offers/discounts etc via Twitter, I think that you have to have to treat Twitter like any other social network - define your objectives and how you are going to resource it.....and then test it out.

As you can see from this and the non-profit Twitter list, those who have the most followers/interest tend to be those who use their Twitter account for multiple purposes - a bit of customer service, a bit of humanising the brand by being helpful to their community, sharing opinions and points of view and the occasional relevant and useful sales message. The great thing about Twitter is that you can ask your community whether you are getting things right. They will tell you straight away what they think. Then you can fix it.

If you use it purely as a 'push' channel, you will slowly lose the interest of your existing followers and give those who find you little to want to follow. I think that your best approach is to mix it up, provide occasional sales messages and more importantly find out what Twitter and social media means to your organisation.

Above all, measure what you can. We track hard metrics such as Unique visits via Twitter referrals, sales etc as well as sentiment towards Econsultancy and use it a customer service channel (e.g. if someone tweets that they are having probems accessing a report for example, we follow up with the Econsultancy account or personally). See Chris Lake's excellent post on this '10 ways to measure Social Media'.

I'll be following you soon and will happily tell you whether you are getting the balance right ..... ;-)

Interesting post Graham.

I'm surprised the list is shorter but certain it will grow. Which application did you use to track these stores down?

I've found twollo to be a good keyword tracker when looking for specifics such as this on twitter. Would be interested to read the post on charities also so will (in the words of a great American politician) be back.

Neil

Another one for the list: http://twitter.com/Ebuyerdotcom

If they can match their fantastic delivery performance and customer relationship management with intelligent use of twitter they are on to a winner in my eyes.

Thanks - I'll update again.

Graham

Woolworths, now owned by Shop Direct Group (owner of Littlewoods) is also on Twitter @team_woolies

via @mattuk

Chris

www.sensorpro.co.uk | @sensorpro | @sensorpro_us

Hi Chris,

I added this one last night, I noticed it while looking at the relaunched Zavii site: http://econsultancy.com/blog/3434-zavvi-co-uk-back-from-the-dead

Looks like a good effort so far...

great list! I have added them on my lists.

www.twitter.com/angela_d (Site source 101)

www.twitter.com/redsternberg

www.twitter.com/mycrabtree

thanks for sharing!

Performance Motorcare Products - online car, motorcycle and marine detailing products.

http://twitter.com/PerformanceMC

Would be interesting to see how the majors use twitter compared to the independents.

Rob

Hi Chris,

You missed French Connection on your list....

http://twitter.com/FrenchConn39

Thanks again

Rob - generally speaking, the independents and smaller retailers seem to be making more effort to update regularly, though there are exceptions, such as @guy1067 from Carphone Warehouse.

Missing from the list also is "Photographic Accessory Specialist" PicStop.co.uk

http://twitter.com/picstop

Another one for the list Graham, a new to Twitter retailer (I suspect they may well have got on-board with the Twitter bandwagon following this excellent post which has proved very popular!)

http://twitter.com/ocadouk

Thanks Paul

Just added lingerie and swimwear store, BeCheeky.com too...

Another small retailer on Twitter: littlesunflowers.com childrenswear & gifts (ie us!)

twitter.com/littlesunflower

Hi Graham,

http://twitter.com/dixonsonline - Dixons is on board!

Thanks Graeme / Bev / Justine, I've added you to the list.

I'd like to submit my own eCommerce site which has a twitter profile at 

http://www.twitter.com/hellobabydirect

Thanks Trevor, I've added it.

Being from Australia I follow UK trends with great attention, since Melbourne follows closely behind.

I do wonder for retailers the ratio of time spent on Twitter to benefit gained.  How much networking does a retailer need to do to make a sale or gain promotion of some sort?

If anyone has any thoughts or stats would love to hear back.

ShopProperly these blogs and discussions are not sales channels - if you want to promote a service then at least add value to the discussion before providing an open acknowledgement that you wish to promote your business. Your comment has nothing to do with this Twitter discussion and everything to do with shameless self promotion. Please show greater respect for the culture of this site in future, otherwise it will only serve to create negativity towards your brand.

Thanks

james

We are doing some interesting things with Twitter ;) @ilovebrands Completely agree with Michelle Goodall, by the way. ILB

Howard Recruitment advertise Retail jobs at @UK_Retail_Jobs for the whole of the UK.

Can anyone provide me with a list of online retailers, in descending order from who were established the latest?