346 Results:
May 1, 2012
May 1, 2012
Read More
March 6, 2012
March 6, 2012
The French consulate in Chicago will be hosting Jason Solarek and four other panelists this Friday, March 9, 2012. This panel will discuss the home goods industry and do a Q & A with the audience. If you would like to attend, please write [email protected].
Panelists include:
+ Mary Jo Killoran – Manufacturer's representative in the Midwest
+ Sean B. Nutley – Co-owner of bluecashew Kitchen Pharmacy
+ Karl Sorensen – Owner of P.O.S.H.
...Read More
February 16, 2012
February 16, 2012
Resident magazine profiles La Villa Collections tableware
The Art in Serving
Lifestyle
By Ali Robertson
The scene at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center is a familiar one. On January 29, its doors will open for the 2012 New York International Gift Fair. Buyers and designers will enter, weaving through the display maze of housewares and accessories. And Carlo and Clorinda Palandri will man their booth for La Villa Collections. There, the
...
Read More
September 14, 2011
September 14, 2011
.............................
How Jason Solarek Created The Facebook Of Retail
By Shira Levine
Freelance Writer, Business Insider
September 14, 2011
Building an e-commerce site can be expensive. Jason Solarek, who founded Bridge, realized that e-commerce sites were lacking their own free network, so he developed what he calls, “Facebook for retail businesses.”
“The E-commerce industry hasn&...
Read More
August 25, 2011
August 25, 2011
From today's Wall St. Journal:
A Toast to Change as Crystal Goes Practical
By J. S. MARCUS
Whether you serve your wine in an IKEA glass costing $2.99, or in hand-cut Baccarat crystal costing 50 times as much, sooner or later you'll have one concern—the ring-shaped stains that wineglasses tend to leave behind.
Some new hand-blown crystal stemware is now strong enough to go into the dishwasher, Jeff Marcus reports on Lunch Break. One
...
Read More
August 12, 2011
August 12, 2011
A Bridge to the Future
by Carol L Schroeder
Read full article: http://www.giftsanddec.com/blogpost/7603-a-bridge-to-the-future
Originally published at: www.giftsanddec.com
August 8, 2011
If you feature products on your website, you know that it can take a lot of time to keep the photos and information current. The Bridge is an innovative approach to solving this problem for retailers, connecting brands, shopkeepers and customers online by "stocking...
Read More
March 31, 2011
March 31, 2011
Read More
November 9, 2010
November 9, 2010
"We find the e-commerce management tool that Solarek Studio set up for Athur Court to be very well designed and easy to use.
I've showed it to colleagues even outside the industry - such as those that do Quality Assurance at Oracle - and they have raved about the beautiful layout.
We specifically had a great experience with Solarek's Bridge sales service this week. Due to the Bridge service, one of our retail partners was...
Read More
October 15, 2010
October 15, 2010
The Wall St. Journal magazine interviewed the founder of the online store Net-a-Porter. I think her views may be able to help Bridge partners sell more. Some excerpts are below:
Excerpts:
People have attributed the site’s success to the black box. I think it’s because everyone had such low expectations of what online shopping would be—that it had to be no-frills, discounted goods picked from a shelf and shoved into an ordinary cardboard box. We’...
Read More
September 23, 2010
September 23, 2010
A brand asked me today a few questions about the Bridge. My response is below.
How will the brand make more money with the Bridge?
1) A brand makes money by making more online sales via retailers' websites. Instead of a retailer having few items from a brand for sale on its site, the retailer will have 100s or 1,000s. The home goods industry is very reliant on bridal and gift registries. If a brand is not on a retailer's website, it's not on the bridal registry, and sales ...
Read More
June 13, 2010
June 13, 2010
Many business owners consider choosing a website design company primarily based upon the colors and pictures in the website company's portfolio. That is somewhat understandable considering the subconscious emotional connection that images and colors make.
Problem with this approach: Most of those pictures were provided by someone else, most likely a photographer and/or culled from a stock photo website. Furthermore, pictures don't get one ranked in Google, ...
Read More
June 1, 2010
June 1, 2010
Below is a New York Times article from this past weekend. The article shares how major retailers are dynamically customizing their promotions based upon past customer purchases. Luxury home goods retailers could likely customize their offerings in a similar fashion. The strategy is akin to how election marketing is done. If someone drives a Prius, then they are likely to be a Democrat. As such, Democratic candidates are marketed to that person. What ...
Read More
December 28, 2009
December 28, 2009
As Stores Sputter, Sales Sizzle Online
Dec. 15 Sets Record for Web-Site Revenue; Sears, Macy's,Other Big Retailers Lure Internet Shoppers
By GEOFFREY A. FOWLER
A holiday season of Web price wars and aggressive online promotions by store-based retailers is leaving e-commerce a larger force in American retail.
While sales conducted at brick-and mortar stores are about flat this season compared with 2008, online retailing grew 4% from the ...
Read More
December 1, 2009
December 1, 2009
From CNN.com today:
Cyber Monday: A lot of clicking and shopping
Report says sales rose 14% over last year and shoppers on average spent more online than they did on Black Friday.
By Parija B. Kavilanz, CNNMoney.com senior writer
Last Updated: December 1, 2009: 10:27 AM ET
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Did Cyber Monday outshine Black Friday this year?
Early reports suggest that Americans shopped more enthusiastically online for holiday bargains than they did in ...
Read More
October 24, 2009
October 24, 2009
This New Yorker article by James Surowiecki suggests that in just a few years Americans (and the world) will be consuming like its 1999. And I think there is some truth to this. If one adds to this information from another recent New Yorker article about cycles (one theorist says a bust comes every 8.6 years), then we do seem destined to recover. Aka: more people will be buying home goods soon.
INCONSPICUOUS CONSUMPTION
by James Surowiecki
...
Read More
September 7, 2009
September 7, 2009
I just added this section our our website design services page. This helps explain the benefits of working with us and our clients/partners.
Our page explaining our website design services can be found here: http://www.solarek.com/
1. There is strength in numbers. The sum of our network provides leverage with brands, manufacturers, and distributor.
2. We can easily and quickliy compare retailer information (e.g. sales ...
Read More
August 26, 2009
August 26, 2009
Sales for the overall home goods industry are down by 35%, but for our Bridge partners they are up. Please see the accompanying chart. This shows a distributor's average retailer sales. Most of the distributor's retailers are down 35%, whereas our Bridge retailers' sales are up from 22% to 98%. These numbers are based on the first seven months of 2008 vs. the first seven months of 2009.
About the Solarek Studio Bridge Solarek Studio ...
Read More
August 15, 2009
August 15, 2009
Tracking abandoned shopping carts and retrieving lost sales
Below is a good article from Inc. magazine about tracking abandoned shopping carts. How can the home goods industry get sales from this area?
Excerpt:
The median abandonment rate is 40 percent for consumer-products companies and 58 percent for service companies, according to a recent survey by MarketingSherpa, a research firm based in Warren, Rhode Island. During periods of economic decline, shopping cart abandonment tends to spike, ...
Read More
June 8, 2009
June 8, 2009
The Ad Age article below describes how the European Commission may propose a system to put color-coded labels on cars designating how 'green' they are. What if this was done for home goods brands? For individual products?
View Ad Age article
Europe May Put Green Grades on Car Ads
Proposed Rating System Would Color-Code Brands by Their Carbon Footprints
By Emma Hall
Published: June 23, 2008
LONDON (AdAge.com) -- In a move that could have ...
Read More
May 18, 2009
May 18, 2009
The following article shows how Chrysler is using its website to drive real world sales. Excerpts:
Nearly six months before the launch, a team at Organic started calculating how much Chrysler would need to spend on marketing to sell its target number of vehicles by figuring out how much Web traffic the company needed to generate.
When the ad campaign went live, the system started calculating whether the commercials were generating ...
Read More
