Back in the 90's when I became a BA i came to the BA role through first being an operations chump that used to annoy the management by constantly recommending process imrpovements.  (Constantly.  I really annoyed them, but was also annoyingly often right.) 

At the time many of the other business analysts had come across from management or subject matter expert roles (thing specialist report producers or specialist process owners as an example.)

That was then and it was in Australia.  Things are different now and you are in the US.

However you could consider leveraging your retail management position by seeking a job at head office (if its a chain) or with one of your larger suppliers.  Don't think all analysts come to the job via IT.

 Hi ,

I have just been transferred from my role as project manager to the IT business analyst role. The IT manager expects me to start performing immediately. please I need your help what should i expect. He even sent me this document to look at. 

 Evening everyone,

I'll try and share my experience as a "route" into getting into the BA game.

I've spent the past 16 months or so working in basically what is a "straight out of University" job, doing a bit of analysis, data input, providing reports on Excel for managers etc etc. Nothing too difficult, nothing too technical. While working in this role, I noticed a few BA's walking around the business, doing their jobs, and I kind of stuck my nose in to the conversations they were having with others and thought "I want to get into that" (especially after seeing the salaries these guys were on, haha!)

I did a bit of research on BA's on the Internet and thought "how can I apply that to my current role?" So what I did, I approached one of the BA's in the business and asked her would she be able to spend some time helping me to automate some of my workload, as a lot of it is to do with Excel spreadsheets. Myself and the BA have worked together on doing this, and this BA has now taken me on as her "assistant" and I now have an "assistant Business Analyst" title, and once I've finally completely automated my previous workload, thus making my actual role redundant, I'm going on to become a full-time Business Analyst, and I'm currently only 23 years old.

Apologies for the long winded story here, but what I'm trying to get at is, it's bound to be extremely difficult to walk straight into a BA job, especially in this economic climate, so why not try and get an entry-level job like I did and modify your workload and work up towards becoming a BA? It's worked for me, I can't see why it wouldn't work for you too if you get into the right business.

Hope this helps!