Retail chiefs still well compensated

NEW YORK — If you're looking for the one thing that separates retailers from their suppliers, the salient fact that sums up the relationship between these greater and lesser partners in a shifting, increasingly uneasy relationship, consider this: In 2001, the highest-paid supplier earned only a tenth as much as the highest-paid retailing executive.

Once his stock options were factored in, Mohawk Home's Bill Kilbride made $1.5 million in 2001 as the highest paid home textiles exec in the United States. But several links up on the food chain, Target ceo Bob Ulrich made 10 times as much, an easy 10 dollars for every one that Kilbride took home, a grand total of $15.1 million in combined salary, bonus and stock options.

And the comparison becomes even more striking when looked at another way — last year, Bob Ulrich, with his $15.1 million pay package, made 53.0 percent more than the combined compensation packages of all 22 senior executives of public home textiles companies ranked in the 2002 edition of the Home Textiles Today Executive Compensation Report — they pulled down a relatively paltry total of $9.9 million. For that matter, each of the five most highly paid retail execs in this year's ranking made more than all of the textiles execs put together.

Top dogs in this year's retailer ranking, their pay rocketing higher in lockstep with sales and earnings of their company, are the two top managers at Target Corp., ceo Ulrich and Target Stores chief Gregg Steinhafel, who came in second in this year's ranking with $14.9 million in compensation.

Nailing down third place, and earning more than his bosses, is Steve Temares, president and coo of rocket-hot Bed Bath & Beyond, who banked $13.5 million, more than twice as much as co-founders Warren Eisenberg and Leonard Feinstein, each of whom took home $6.1 million during 2001.

Notably, Bed Bath & Beyond is one of the few American retailers to reward one of its front-line merchants, chief merchandising officer Arthur Stark, who pulled down $4.8 million for his role in securing the chain's position as the top specialty retailer of home fashions products.

In fourth place this year is another Target exec, vice chairman Gerald Storch, with $13.1 million. He's followed by Kohl's ceo Lawrence Montgomery, with a $10.4 million compensation package.