E-retail organizations large and small are chock full of innovation, and Internet Retailer’s new The Hot 100 celebrates the best.

The Hot 100 takes over the December issue of Internet Retailer magazine, and the goal of the annual issue is to celebrate the creative thinking and new ideas e-retail executives are bringing to the industry. The list is peppered with familiar Top 500 e-retailers such as Amazon.com and Nordstrom.com. But it also features innovative startups from around the world, such as Xiaomi Inc., the Chinese smartphone manufacturer that came out of nowhere five years ago and is now the No. 4 handset maker in the world by units sold, with very nearly all of them sold online at Mi.com or through storefronts on online marketplaces.

Readers familiar with the Hot 100 from previous editions may notice some changes Internet Retailer made to this annual list. For more than a dozen years, the Hot 100 has focused largely on examples of outstanding website design and usability of desktop and, more recently, mobile websites and apps. The goal in those editions was to highlight the best retail websites, based on how they looked, functioned and served the needs of their consumers in ways other retailers could learn from.

This year the editors decided to come at the Hot 100 from a different direction, for a number of reasons. First, e-retail sites have gotten markedly better at serving customers’ needs with their website design. It felt constricting to limit the Hot 100 to design enhancements only because it appears many online retailers have figured it out. Second, what is really exciting the industry, and Internet Retailer’s editors, is the greater cadence of innovative, online-dependent business models emerging, and the creative approaches to using technology and data to refine how e-retailers serve consumers’ needs.

Consequently, this latest edition of the Hot 100 reflects that, highlighting e-retail innovation in all its forms. With that focus, entrants are organized by categories highlighting what is innovative about them. The categories are: business model, content, design, international, mobile, omnichannel, site features and social.

E-retailer Stitch Fix, just 5 years old, made the list for how it is developing its subscription-based business model. The women’s apparel and accessories merchant offers convenience, customization and a shopping experience that gets more personal over time. For example, it recently added a mobile app in which a consumer can share photos of herself in clothes she likes directly with her assigned stylist. The stylist gains a better sense of what the consumer likes and is more likely to buy from Stitch Fix.

Stitch Fix CEO Katrina Lake says the goal is to grow such personal aspects to the point where consumers buy repeatedly because they know they will get a mix of products and services that makes it worthwhile. “People can change the oil in their car themselves, but they often don’t because they know there are people out there who can do it better and more efficiently than they can,” Lake says. “We are able to do better shopping than they do on their own.”

The Hot 100 retailer profiles can be found here, sorted by category. The complete list appears in the December issue of Internet Retailer (free to subscribers) or can be bought in print or digital format here.