MIKASA’s powerhouse COUNTRYSIDE franchise continues its domination decades after their launches. Tapping into the zeitgeist of the times, the patterns’ staying power is testament to compelling classic design, line extensions, and passionate fans.
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IT’S BEEN 50 YEARS SINCE MIKASA’s FRENCH COUNTRYSIDE DEBUTED, the perfect panacea to a formal-dominated dinnerware domain. The scalloped, edged, and curved creamware provided the ideal ...
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The Atlantic shares how Chinese factories have found a new way around U.S. retailers and into our homes: Chinese apps. SHEIN and other Chinese apps are bypassing Amazon to be a new leader in Chinese goods. In addition to Amazon, Target, Walmart, and indie shops now have a new group of digital competitors embedded in customers’ pockets.
Except from The Atlantic article:
MATERIAL WORLD
IS THIS HOW AMAZON ENDS?
An open embrace of cheap foreign products has helped ...
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I have a friend who recently took a job with a respected women’s clothing retailer after 13 years of retirement. My friend, Leslie, a former school teacher, wanted to be of use and knew that retail was a great opportunity for seniors. She was all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed her first week. She loved that the manager asked her to try on clothes she liked and then suggested outfits that would look good on her. Leslie even purchased a few of those suggestions, couture she never would have ...
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Part of my job is to review registry software. I ensure it works well for retailers, registrants, and gift-givers (family and friends). I also assess whether it offers good value (price vs. results).
When looking for registry software, some retailers consider MyRegistry.com for their registry service. I reviewed a retailer's site using MyRegistry.com and assessed how a customer would make a registry purchase. For privacy purposes, I blurred the store's name in the screenshots shown.
Scott Galloway, the NYU business professor and firebrand, pens a weekly, attention-grabbing article about business trends. In last week’s post, he noted the rise of the attention economy. (...Yes, my post is an attention-seeker writing about an attention-seeker writing about attention.) Comparing our current economy to those of the past, Mr. Galloway notes that today’s oil is time. He tracks the growth of digital companies like Netflix, Microsoft, Facebook, and TikTok that...
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This past week, Amazon announced it was adding Grubhub delivery to its Prime subscription (Read the news about Amazon and Grubhub here). The goal of Amazon Prime (and other subscription services) is to make the subscription so pervasive that it's sticky. Don’t like Prime movies? Ok, but you love free Grubhub delivery. If you don’t need feature X and want to cancel, you realize you still need feature Y and keep paying for the subscription.
Stores and brands sometimes ask us: How does Bridge compare to Faire?
I thought we'd compare the two service providers.
Similarities: Bridge & Faire
Audience. Both service the retail industry. In particular, both service brands and retailers. Bridge also services sales reps, and Faire tries to steer clear of them--which is one reason reps don't like Faire much.
Delivery method. Both are online platforms.
Service offered. Faire is a wholesale marketplace. It
Let’s imagine a retailer wants to operate an online store. What would the retailer and its customers experience when using Bridge vs other software? We found that a retailer using Bridge can go from having no web store to one with thousands of products in under an hour. And, there’s no charge. Other software doesn’t offer this ability.
To highlight our findings, we put together this comparison graphic showing Bridge Store and Shopify. (We chose Shopify to ...
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We launched a new version of Bridge Store in April of 2019. Since that release, we've added hundreds of new features. An easy way to see the evolution of Bridge from 1.0 to 2.0 and beyond is via a side-by-side comparison.
Shown here is the Bridge Store for Shulan's:
General public shopper viewing the Bulova home page.
General public shopper viewing the Bulova Precisionist Collection home page.
General public shopper viewing the Bulova Precisionist Black and Rose
There are many e-commerce platforms from which to choose. A store owner can choose from more than 30 platforms including Bridge, Shopify, Big Commerce, and Big Cartel. Unfortunately, very few software providers are easy to set up and use. Most importantly, they may not improve retail sales. A store owner is surely mindful of increasing costs and wasting time on software.
Bridge, our e-commerce platform, helps more than 700 indie stores offer a website and bridal registry that...
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Saks Fifth Avenue just launched a new website. Since more than 600 stores rely on Bridge Store to power their websites, I decided to compare the new site, which likely cost millions of dollars, to an indie retailer's Bridge Store software. An indie store pays pennies compared to Saks' millions, so the Saks site must be a million times better, right?
After a careful review, I'm happy to share that our indie stores have the better website. And, it sort of 'saks' for Saks that it spent millions ...
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Part of my job is to review registry software. I ensure that it works well for retailers, registrants, and gift-givers (family and friends). I also assess whether it offers good value (price vs results).
A retailer recently shared with me that it uses the service MyRegistry.com. I reviewed the retailer's site and how a customer would make a registry purchase via MyRegistry.com. For privacy purposes, I changed the name of the store in the screenshots shown.
When a shopper visits a retailer's website, it often sees just a fraction of what a brand offers. With Bridge, we can help retailers and brands fix this problem. To examine the solution, let's examine how a customer can shop for Juliska on two different retailer websites. One retailer uses the Juliska Smart Products service and the other does not.
When a business offers a website, it's a costly venture. A business, such as an indie store, brand, or sales rep group, will build the site and then have to maintain it. On a day-to-day basis, it has to ensure the pages load quickly. This often requires the business use image-optimization software to reduce the page size and a CDN (content delivery network) to get the content closer to the visitor's geographic location. These costs add up.
Bridge and Shopify both bundle many services under a ...
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Your Bridge gift registry software looks better in Google than your competitors' software. In this example, we can see how Breed, a retailer in Texas, appears in Google. Breed's listing shows the number of registries and reviews. Competitors listings do not show quantitative information--and look drab by comparison.
Google 'likes' this these statistics because it shows that your registry software is unique and you're servicing customers. Customers like these statistics because ...
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October 3, 2019
October 3, 2019
Do you think that Dropbox is free? I thought so too until my 'free' account filled up and Dropbox wants me to pay $16/month--and $20/month if I want a 'team' account.
Dropbox's pricing page is a doctoral lesson in how to charge customers for oxygen.