Your preferred customer program, POS or even just your intuition should make it possible to identify those individuals who mean the most to your business. It pays to give VIP treatment to these “regulars” whose loyalty is key to your success.
1) It seems like a simple thing, but greeting them by name is an easy way to make them feel ...
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December 2, 2015
December 2, 2015
A word of advice to retailers that lament losing $3 on shipping charges: let's instead celebrate getting the order. :) Most stores offer free shipping on all items (per my article here ) The goal is to get the sale and eat the shipping cost. If you can charge anything for shipping, consider yourself lucky. Let's consider this example: For a $100 item, a customer pays the retailer $10 to ship the item and it's costing the retailer $13 to ship it. The retailer may think it lost $3, but in ...
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December 1, 2015
December 1, 2015
Indy retailers are losing the battle to get their part of the online market, according to today's WSJ. Indy retailers online sales year over year didn't grow nearly as much as big box stores' sales. Specialty shops' sales grew 7% while the big box stores grew by 4x that (30%).
How can we help indy stores get their share? We need to give them better websites that are filled with more products. We need to give them tools that help them better share news and sales, and connect with their customers ...
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November 27, 2015
November 27, 2015
Target and Best Buy are offering free shipping on all orders, reports today's WSJ. Walmart requires a purchase of $50 or more. The article says that more big box stores are trying to turn their physical stores into distribution centers.
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November 17, 2015
November 17, 2015
Do big box stores demand better terms than indy stores from indy manufacturers? Yes, and that is why we salute Etsy for asking big box stores to sign a pledge to be less demanding and help indy manufacturers. Please find the article from HFN here:
Today's HFN magazine shares Bridge's progress with helping independent retailers. Bridge would like to thanks its members for helping everyone make it to this milestone.
Article:
Bridge and its Tabletop Partners Reach a Milestone
Bridge founder expects to reach $1.2 million by year's end
Posted on November 6, 2015 by Allison Zisko
We're happy that Tableware Today asked Bridge founder Jason Solarek to share his thoughts about e-commerce. In this month's Last Word column, you can read about e-commerce trends that independent, Main Street stores are facing. Jason also shares some potential solutions.
Full article:
THE BRIDGE TO MAIN STREET
A Connecticut retailer recently told me that it lost a bride's registry worth $10,000. The bride reviewed the store's outdated website and online product offering and wasn't ...
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December 7, 2014
December 7, 2014
"Even the selection at a classic big-box retailer with hundreds of thousands of items doesn’t seem that wide anymore, compared to the Web," reports Niraj Shah in the Wall Street Journal.
"Shoppers now take for granted the concept of access to a deep range of goods... It’s hard to win these days without offering a wide variety."
Full article:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/wake-up-brick-and-mortar-retailers-1416874241
At Bridge, we're helping independent retailers offer 10,000s of items to...
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January 20, 2008
January 20, 2008
Big Boxes Retailers to Tabletop: Hand Over Your Playbook
The pressure on the tabletop industry continues even for those that have sold out to doing business with Target and big box stores. The stores can't take cover in these football-field size stores; these stores are now requiring them to hand over their playbooks. Allison Zisko writes in this week's HFN:
Target’s newest private-label tabletop initiative, which has vendors negotiating directly with Target’s sourcing arm rather than its team of ...
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