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  1. News from Us
  2. News from Members
  3. Events
  4. Press
  5. Dollars & Sense
  6. Profile Stories
  7. Updates
  8. Training Calendar
  9. Training Videos
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+ Bridge in the News - Bridge in the News

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July 28, 2022 Always Be Reading 📚
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Always Be Reading 📚
July 28, 2022
In the movie Glengarry Glen Ross, a motivational speaker played by Alec Baldwin addresses a group of salesmen. He writes three letters vertically on the chalkboard, “A B C.” He explains that the acronym means "Always Be Closing."  

The way that Baldwin's character thinks about sales, I may think about reading. I think of: "ABR,” Always Be Reading. Whether it's breakfast, lunch, or dinner, I try to get in a page or two of the Times, Wall St. ...
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July 24, 2022 Bridge Client Mikasa Mentioned in the Wall St. Journal
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Bridge Client Mikasa Mentioned in the Wall St. Journal
July 24, 2022
This weekend’s WSJ shares how Bed Bath & Beyond customers preferred Mikasa over BBB’s private label brands. When BBB couldn’t give customers what they wanted, sales tanked—and the CEO, Mark Tritton, was shown the door. 

BBB is not the only major retailer questioning the recent mania to offer private labels. Amazon is walking back its private label brands, but is doing to for another reason: the Department of Justice may be investigating it for anti-competitive...
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July 20, 2022 Amazon and Facebook Have Made the Web 10,000 Times Dirtier
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Amazon and Facebook Have Made the Web 10,000 Times Dirtier
July 20, 2022
Amazon issued a press release stating that it is fighting with 10,000 Facebook groups that sell fake Amazon reviews. It’s ironic, since Amazon has been a chief promoter of the avenue allowing this behavior: Section 230. Section 230 allows tech platforms to host and indirectly promote just about any type of bad behavior, including illegal behavior (fake review services and yes, human trafficking, murder-for-hire, etc.) and then say it’s just a community space and belatedly remove the ...
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July 12, 2022 Super Subscriptions 🦸‍♂️🦸‍♀️🦹🏽‍♂️
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Super Subscriptions 🦸‍♂️🦸‍♀️🦹🏽‍♂️
July 12, 2022
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. 

This past week, The Wall St. Journal...
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July 10, 2022 Naked truth: Amazon doesn't appear to care if it sells fakes
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Naked truth: Amazon doesn't appear to care if it sells fakes
July 10, 2022
Retail Dive reports on Amazon's lazy claims that it cares about stopping counterfeits. Counterfeiters on Amazon may steal a brand's product design, name, and product pictures. When a brand reports this to Amazon, Amazon often does: nothing.

This is an issue for American brands.  For example:
  • A brands creates a product. The brand pays for research and development.
  • Brand may pay to have it made in America.
  • Brand takes professional pictures of the finished product.
...
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July 8, 2022 Amazon’s secret deal with the Port Authority canceled
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Amazon’s secret deal with the Port Authority canceled
July 8, 2022
Excerpts:
- A report produced by groups seeking to block it pointed out that the number of Amazon facilities in New Jersey grew to 49 from one between 2013 and 2020, helping to nearly triple the number of warehouse workers in the state, to about 70,000.

- The Port Authority revealed the proposed lease with Amazon in August, the day its board voted to authorize the deal.

- Under the proposed deal, Amazon tentatively committed to investing $125 million in renovating two buildings ...
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July 6, 2022 WSJ: European Union challenges Amazon’s abuses
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WSJ: European Union challenges Amazon’s abuses
July 6, 2022
The EU has passed a law that will affect Amazon and other big tech companies. The law will likely make it harder for Amazon to promote its own private label products on its website at the expense of others. 

While this is welcome news to many, this is a small victory as Amazon’s ambitions are grand as well as its ability to outpace laws. For the first 25 years of the Internet, Amazon, founded in 1994, rode on the rails of the government being too slow to enforce online tax ...
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June 27, 2022 WSJ: If your porch has a lot of Amazon packages, maybe take down the American flag
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WSJ: If your porch has a lot of Amazon packages, maybe take down the American flag
June 27, 2022
If someone has an American flag flying on their porch and Amazon boxes often at their doorstep, maybe they should take the flag down and put up a Chinese flag. Amazon appears to be profiting by cutting out much our domestic retail community and instead helping Chinese businesses.  And don’t expect Amazon to pay much in local taxes either. 

This past weekend’s WSJ shares how third-party sellers, many of them from China, have flooded Amazon with spurious listings, leaving ...
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June 19, 2022 Swimsuits help reveal the costs behind retail goods
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Swimsuits help reveal the costs behind retail goods
June 19, 2022
Do you love a great deal on a t-shirt or TV? Sure, we all do. Yet, sometimes when we shop, the lower the price we pay, the less we pay: people.  People that make the goods (factory workers) and people that sell the goods (aka indie store owners) are the victims in the discount-pricing rush. 

Today’s Times shares that making a bathing suit in Sir Lanka costs about $4 per unit while in Portugal it may cost $16. In NYC, the minimum wage is $15/hour—making production in NYC ...
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June 16, 2022 Nice to see a major brand like Lego building a factory in the U.S.A.
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Nice to see a major brand like Lego building a factory in the U.S.A.
June 16, 2022
Today's Wall St. Journal shares Lego is building a factory in Virginia. Article highlights: 
  • Lego has 100 stores in the US. 
  • Lego closed its Connecticut factory in 2006, and moved a lot of production to Mexico.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/lego-to-spend-1-billion-on-new-u-s-factory-11655307229 View Post
June 15, 2022 Building the Horizon 🌄
Building the Horizon 🌄
June 15, 2022
The Brick report helps our company track our past and current progress. Our team can easily look back at the last 78 weeks and know what we did. (Most companies would be hard pressed to do this easily.) The Brick brings us together and keeps us on the same (web)page.  Its success leads to me ask: “Could we have an approach that helps us look at our future?" I’ve sometimes thought about crafting a weekly 'Horizon Report' that would share what’s next for us.  

...
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June 2, 2022 Facebook’s ticker should be: DATA…or THEFT
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Facebook’s ticker should be: DATA…or THEFT
June 2, 2022
Today’s WSJ article made me think:
1.  We need to reserve a ticker symbol for Bridge, like BRDG. 

2. Meta should use the ticker DATA or THEFT, as that’s the business they’re in. They are in the business of using your personal data—whether via Facebook or in the metaverse, often without us being aware.  To see a web page on Facebook or Instagram often requires logging in. Don’t want to log in? Too bad, that’s the only way to see the content. ...
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May 31, 2022 WSJ: Weddings Are Full Steam Ahead
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WSJ: Weddings Are Full Steam Ahead
May 31, 2022
Read the article: https://www.wsj.com/articles/this-summer-the-wedding-is-happening-no-matter-what-11653858170?mod=mhp View Post
May 31, 2022 Ambassadors 🍪
Ambassadors 🍪
May 31, 2022
I was reading enviously about college kids adopting an app called BeReal and noticed that BeReal is employing ambassadors on college campuses. I even looked up the app’s page about this ambassador program (https://bere.al/en/ambassadors). Sure enough, a week later the Times published another college app piece on Sidechat (yes, I was sadly still reading about tween apps a week later…). Again, the app is finding success via campus ambassadors.  

Thus far, ...
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May 30, 2022 Jerry Chazen, Who Helped Create Store-within-a-store Concept, Passes
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Jerry Chazen, Who Helped Create Store-within-a-store Concept, Passes
May 30, 2022
When I explain Bridge's Product Syncing service, I sometimes compare the service to the store-within-a-store concept at the mall.  I didn't know that Jerry Chazen, who helped found Liz Claiborne, pioneered that concept in the 1980s. Thank you, Jerry.

Mr. Chazen passed in February 2022. Read the obituary for Mr. Chazen here:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/liz-claiborne-co-founder-helped-create-a-fashion-star-11644505274

 
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May 11, 2022 NYT: More Registrants Want Cash...And We're Not Talking Gift Cards
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NYT: More Registrants Want Cash...And We're Not Talking Gift Cards
May 11, 2022
This week's Times shares that brides are increasingly asking for cash gifts. This trend pulls back the curtain on the underbelly of wedding gifts.  Over the last 20 years, a trend emerged where a bride would ask for a traditional gift (i.e. a crystal champagne flute set, a fine china plate, etc.) but then redeem the credit for a television or vacuum. The stores that were especially adept at this were the big-box stores with a wide variety of offerings like Macy's and Target. They would use ...
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May 11, 2022 Bus-ta Move 🚌
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Bus-ta Move 🚌
May 11, 2022
In Beyond Entrepreneurship 2.0, which the Bridge team is currently reading, the author Jim Collins confesses that he missed a key ingredient 25 years ago when he wrote the first edition. He states that he now realizes the most important part of achieving a great company is: getting the right people 'on the bus.’  I agree. Fourteen and a half years ago (long before I opened this book), I was lucky enough to pick up the right ‘passenger:' Moshe replied to my job posting (...
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May 4, 2022 WSJ: Facebook faceplants with e-commerce
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WSJ: Facebook faceplants with e-commerce
May 4, 2022
Today’s Wall St. Journal shares show retailers are frustrated by Facebook’s e-commerce offering. 

Sellers complain it misses many basic features, including offering an item in different colors or sizes (what Bridge calls a “multi-SKU item”).   One can’t control where the item is sold—apparently, a seller may have to ship to the Maldives. Some sellers said it’s too complicated to manage the service.  What if they need help? There&...
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May 3, 2022 The Prestige
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The Prestige
May 3, 2022
While eating a slice of coal-fired pizza at Arturo’s in Soho yesterday, and getting an occasional whiff of Houston Street garbage, I had to admit: I was at a loss for insight to share with my coworkers this week.  Each week, I send out a motivational message to my team that precedes a summary of what they accomplished. We call this report the Brick report. This would be my seventy-second Brick introduction: What else could I say--and would they miss it if there was not an introduction...
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April 26, 2022 NYT: Amazon claims to not be responsible for what it sells
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NYT: Amazon claims to not be responsible for what it sells
April 26, 2022
NYT: Amazon claims to not be responsible for what it sells

Amazon sells you an item, gets it from its warehouse, and delivers it to you—but says that it is not a seller, shares Moira Weigel in this past weekend’s Times. This shields it from accountability to customers that receive harmful goods. Amazon is using a similar excuse that Facebook and social media platforms use regarding harmful content: don’t hold us accountable; blame our users, even if we provide the service ...
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Press: Shop Local & Bridge in the News
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Shop Local Helps Indie Merchants in Florida Get Google Sales Leads 🔍
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April 2024

Shop Local Helps Indie Merchants in Tennessee Get Google Sales Leads 🔍
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April 2024

Shop Local Helps Indie Merchants in Louisiana Get Google Sales Leads 🔍
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Shop Local Helps Indie Merchants in Delaware Get Google Sales Leads 🔍
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April 2024

Shop Local Helps Indie Merchants in Pennsylvania Get Google Sales Leads 🔍
Shop Local Helps Indie Merchants in Pennsylvania Get Google Sales Leads 🔍
March 2024

Shop Local Helps Indie Merchants Get Sales Leads in Mississippi
Shop Local Helps Indie Merchants Get Sales Leads in Mississippi
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Shop Local Merchants Are 60% of Google Page 1 Results in South Carolina
Shop Local Merchants Are 60% of Google Page 1 Results in South Carolina
March 2024

Shop Local Merchants Are 50% of Google Page 1 Results in Georgia
Shop Local Merchants Are 50% of Google Page 1 Results in Georgia
March 2024

Shop Local Helps Indie Merchants Get More Sales Leads than Big-Box Stores Using Google
Shop Local Helps Indie Merchants Get More Sales Leads than Big-Box Stores Using Google
February 2024

Shop Local Retailers Rank on Page 1 of Google in 60% of States
Shop Local Retailers Rank on Page 1 of Google in 60% of States
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