Falls Road Running Wins Judge's Choice Award

One Baltimore retailer is garnering national attention for powering America’s economy.

Jim Adams, founder of Falls Road Running Store, is the Judge’s Choice Award winner for the National Retail Federation’s “This is Retail” video contest. This is the first year of the NRF’s video contest, which asked retailers to create short videos about the role their businesses play in the economy.

Adams’ son, Andrew Adams, 25, is a filmmaker in Los Angeles. When the younger Adams found out about the contest, he called his dad to encourage him to enter, offering to put together the video.

He called and asked “Would you invest in a round trip ticket to see you and mom for the weekend?” Jim Adams said.

The two worked together on the video concept and the entire process of filming and editing took four days, Jim Adams said. But working with a professional had its unique challenges.

“It was a lot more complicated than I thought it was going to be. He made me do it over and over again,” Jim Adams said, noting the various humors and more serious takes they filmed.

The NRF received about 100 video submissions and narrowed that list down to 40. Six judges from outside of the NRF, including John S. Rogers, general manager of e-commerce for Baltimore-based Under Armour, scored the top 40, said Ellen Davis, senior vice president of the NRF.

The 20 highest scoring videos moved on to public voting. Adams received the top score from the judges.

“In that span of two minutes, Jim did an incredible job demonstrating how retail powers the rest of the U.S. economy, demonstrating when someone buys a product in his store, what happens next,” Davis said.

Though he doesn’t think the publicity has brought in more customers, “it never hurts to have your name out there,” Adams said.

Adams made it into the top five, but did not advance to the top three. The NRF announced the top three winners earlier this month and will announce the rankings Wednesday at its annual Washington Leadership conference.

This article was written by Maria Zilberman and originally posted in The Daily Record. It can be accessed here: Falls Road Running Store sprints its way to Judge's Choice award in video contest.