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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
  10. Jobs
+ Bridge in the News - Bridge in the News

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December 28, 2022 Referrals: Johnny Softwareseed 👨‍🌾 🍎
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Referrals: Johnny Softwareseed 👨‍🌾 🍎
December 28, 2022
In the book The Cold Start Problem, Andrew Chen says that the 'network effect’ is really three effects: 
  • The acquisition effect 
  • The engagement effect
  • The monetization effect 

In the beginning, a business seeking to build a network has to concentrate on acquiring users, even if they are non-paying. Companies often give away the service, especially software companies, and we can see that with Facebook, Slack, TikTok, and many others.  Bridge didn’t do ...
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December 17, 2022 Shop Local in the wild
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Shop Local in the wild
December 17, 2022
Seasons greetings from the PNW everyone! I was out shopping today and came across a sign in the wild promoting Shop Local, a concept near and dear to us and something we have believed in from the inception of the company..helping support local businesses in a way that's beneficial to all. So much so that we began transitioning Bridge to ShopLocal earlier this year.

This particular sign was in a mall similar to one that you may have near you. Having been decimated by big name brands pulling up...
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December 1, 2022 The Price is Right 🛒
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The Price is Right 🛒
December 1, 2022
When we talk about prices, there are two prices that are important: 
  • The price that we charge clients.
  • The price our clients charge their customers. 

We normally talk about the former, aka how our prices compare with other competitors, like Shopify or wholesale services like Faire. 

Of increasing importance to us is what our retailers charge their customers.  Walmart recently announced that it was taking brands to account and pressuring them to keep ...
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November 21, 2022 Reaganomics: Show Me the Money 📝
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Reaganomics: Show Me the Money 📝
November 21, 2022
Ronald Reagan said, “If you’re explaining, you’re losing.”  Reaganomics usually refers to tax cuts and trickle down economics, yet I propose that we take the Gipper’s quote and ask: How can simplicity contribute to a business's success?

When we share what leading companies do, we can often skip an explanation and sum it up in a brief sentence. Examples:
  • Walmart offers low prices.
  • Facebook connects us.
  • Hyatt offers a place to sleep.
  • Amazon offers
...
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November 9, 2022 Don't Laugh: Fun Is a Good Marketing Vehicle 🤹‍♂️
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Don't Laugh: Fun Is a Good Marketing Vehicle 🤹‍♂️
November 9, 2022
Bridge has something that every store needs, but doesn’t really want: product data. We get stores to trust us that they need our product data for 64,000 products from 109 brands. They really don’t want the data—they want the sales from it. The data itself is worthless, but the sales from it are invaluable. Do you know who also has this issue? Funeral directors.  Last week's Wall Street Journal shares that mortuaries are leveraging bonsai trees, setting up bouncy castles, ...
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November 2, 2022 New Feature: More Easily Invite Your Brands
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New Feature: More Easily Invite Your Brands
November 2, 2022
Your Bridge now makes it easier for you to connect with and sell your brands’ products. We have added a new page to invite brands to sync products.  This page significantly reduces the number of steps that your store takes to invite a brand.  

There is no charge for a member to send sync invites or sync products with a brand. Product Syncing is free for retailers, sales reps, trade marts, and interior designers.  Participating brands pay for the service. 
 ...
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October 3, 2022 Are We Time Givers or Takers? ⌛️⏳
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Are We Time Givers or Takers? ⌛️⏳
October 3, 2022
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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September 28, 2022 Tip: Reply to Reviews To Help Your Business
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Tip: Reply to Reviews To Help Your Business
September 28, 2022
We have a tip to help your business. You can easily boost the number of reviews your business receives on your Bridge.

Steps:
  1. When a customer leaves a review on your Bridge Store’s Review page, leverage this to get even more reviews. Reply to the review.
  2. Write a reply that acknowledges the customer's specific response. 

As an example, Goldsmith Cardel replies to every review left on its Bridge site.  Please see the example screenshots. 

Benefits of this ...
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September 19, 2022 Do We Have the Wright Stuff? 🛩
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Do We Have the Wright Stuff? 🛩
September 19, 2022
In the early 2000s, the board game Cranium became a hit.  The game combined elements of Scrabble and Pictionary with the goal of helping more people enjoy playing a game. Richard Tait, who created Cranium and sold it to Hasbro in 2008 for $77.5m, passed away in July.  Like Mr. Tait, I had been a paperboy, but he went beyond what I ever offered:  he came up with a new service that sold breakfast sandwiches along his newspaper route. He increased profits and made customers happier. ...
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September 15, 2022 Your Bridge Shop Has a New Website Domain
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Your Bridge Shop Has a New Website Domain
September 15, 2022
Bridge has updated your Bridge Shop's domain address. Your site's URL now includes "myshoplocal.com."  If you look at the top of your account, you will see this domain in the web browser's URL field.   Specifically, we changed the URL from [YourBusinessName].bridgecatalog.com to [YourBusinessName].myshoplocal.com.

For example, the previous Bridge Shop URL address was: 
babcockgifts.bridgecatalog.com

The updated URL address is:
babcockgifts.myshoplocal....
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September 8, 2022 Dollars and Sense Advice from Mom 👩‍🦰
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Dollars and Sense Advice from Mom 👩‍🦰
September 8, 2022
When I was a kid, my mom instilled in me a lesson to always get paid for my work. When I went to mow a lawn or do my newspaper route, she’d remind me,  “Be sure you get paid.”  As an adult, these flashbacks are vivid like a scene from Citizen Kane—just swap out the Rosebud sled with my newspaper delivery bike.  Today, this lesson still resonates when running Bridge. When calling a store that hasn’t paid its Bridge bill, I’m confident in asking ...
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September 1, 2022 Gift Cards Are a Gift to ...Stores 💸
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Gift Cards Are a Gift to ...Stores 💸
September 1, 2022
When is the last time you received a Starbucks gift card?  I’ve received them as holiday gifts, and I’ve given them to sales reps as thank you gifts. Starbucks gift cards, like their shops, are ubiquitous.  They are almost as popular as gift cards from our nemesis: Amazon.com. Just about every month, a company offers me an Amazon gift card if I sign up for a service. WBGO, the local, Newark-based, non-profit radio station known for jazz, recently offered me an Amazon gift ...
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August 7, 2022 Sales Reps Are Important
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Sales Reps Are Important
August 7, 2022
We all know that sales reps play a crucial role in our industry, but one may ask, “how important a role?” I was happy to see Ari Lowenstein, our industry friend at MarketTime, pen a report that measures the impact of sales reps in this digital era. 

The next time a brand extols the benefits of Faire or another online platform that cuts out reps, please share this article and its report with them. 

Thank you, Ari. 

Read the full article:
https://www....
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July 26, 2022 Helping Stores Work More Efficiently
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Helping Stores Work More Efficiently
July 26, 2022
This graphic shows the situation in which many retailers find themselves. Many retailers are stuck trying to connect their digital wholesale buying and their stores’ websites.
  • On the left, we see wholesale software operators, including MarketTime, Juniper, Faire, Bridge, etc.
  • In the middle is the retailer.
  • On the right we see retail (D2C) software providers, including Bridge, Shopify, Big Commerce, etc. 
The software entities on the left should connect ...
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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 6, 2022 'Dem Apps 🍎
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'Dem Apps 🍎
July 6, 2022
In the movie Good Will Hunting, Matt Damon, who plays a handsome MIT janitor moonlighting as a math savant (can one say, “Hollywood career vehicle”?), woos a young lady (played by the actress Minnie Driver) by outmaneuvering a few competing, obnoxious cads. When Damon’s character gets the girl's telephone number, he proudly shows it to the other guys and boasts, with his South Boston access, “How 'bout ‘dem apples?”  I imagine Tim Cook imitating this...
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June 30, 2022 Showtime 🎪
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Showtime 🎪
June 30, 2022
The next book our Bridge team may read is John List’s book The Voltage Effect.  List, who is a behavioral economist at the University of Chicago, shares a variety of suggestions to grow a business. He warns us about false positives, such as what the “Just Say No” drug campaign experienced. He suggests we look for businesses with scalable ingredients. (People are not scalable, but good news for Bridge: software is!)

I'd add to List's advice this simple maxim: show ...
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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 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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Next page

Press: Shop Local & Bridge in the News
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August 2024

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

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

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

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

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
February 2024

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