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, ...
Read More
We work hard each day, and likely don’t mind if others notice. We want others to see the ingenuity of our software. But what if that wasn’t the case? If you want an example of someone that got passed by, just ask Van Gogh. Yeah, thaaaaat world-famous, earless, impressionist artist whose work today graces the walls of countless museums. The Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) is currently running an exhibition showcasing how the world missed appreciating Van Gogh’s...
Read More
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...
Read More
Lululemon is adding a paid membership service called Studio that offers access to digital classes and gives discounts on in-person classes and apparel. The apparel company suggests it may also offer member-exclusive events.
Companies are often taking this approach: offer unlimited access to a digital service, bundle in discounts and other peripheral perks, and charge a flat monthly fee. (Lululemon is charging $39/month.)
Many in the retail industry are seeking to launch a paid ...
Read More
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. ...
Read More
Nice to see industry friend David Zrike in the new issue of Tableware Today. In David’s article, he reminds us of the magic that happens at shows and welcomes us to join him and industry colleagues at the October Tabletop Show.
In the issue, there is also a nice advertisement for the Tabletop Association, which David leads. Of the 48 brands displayed in the ad, Bridge has partnerships with 17 (35%). Products from these 17 brands, which total more than 24,000 products, can be...
Read More
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 ...
Read More
Over the last 15 years, brands have been increasingly doing a run-around to bypass their retailers and sell direct. Some brands suggested they’d never have a physical store. Some brands said they’d never have their products sold in another retailer’s physical store. What allowed the brands this hubris? The internet and Facebook. With the internet, brands would have a ‘store’ anywhere the customer is, and with Facebook, they could target them.
Last week, Amazon bought iRobot, the company that makes Roomba, the robot vacuum cleaner, for $1.7b. Why? Yes, their 'Rosie from the Jetsons' has AI and is in your home (which is where Amazon wants to be), but the reason Amazon wants it is because customers want it. Which leads us to ask: Why do customers want Roomba? Because it does something that humans find annoying and hate doing: cleaning. Roomba has spotted the value that robots bring to the world and it's not simply being ...
Read More
I don’t own a car, yet I have a strange desire to read Dan Neil's car column each weekend in The Wall St. Journal. Why would someone who doesn’t own a car, won’t be buying one soon, and hasn’t owned one in 25 years read a car column? It's a mix of enjoying the design and technology of automobiles, wanting to know what Dwayne Johnson may be buying next, loving Dan’s witty writing style, and, confession, simply being 13-years old at heart. Cars are ...
Read More
NEW PRODUCTS ARE HERE!
We are in the process of updating our catalog on Bridge, adding new products and deleting retired pieces. We are still one of the only companies that continues to have all products made entirely in Italy, using Italian materials and being made by Italians. This is important to keep the classic methods of ceramic and woven kitchen towel industries in Italy going. We've been working with Italy and independent retailers for 22 years and we don't have any plans ...
Read More
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.
Happy to see industry friends Virginie DeTustaine, who distributes three fine French brands, and Neil Peters, Director of Sales for Carmel Ceramica, in Atlanta.
View Post
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...
Read More
My friend works at the Swiss running shoemaker ON. She recently texted me and suggested I try their running shoes. Three weeks later, I was handling two boxes of their Swiss engineered shoes. On one ON shoe, there is a little Swiss flag and the words “Swiss Engineering” printed. When I get a pair of Nike’s, they don’t say "Beaverton-engineering" or "US-engineering." Nor do Adidas shoes proclaim “German engineering.” ...
Read More
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.
When talking about memberships and subscriptions, these two business models are sometimes interchanged but actually are different. They often differ in their pricing, customers, and offerings. A subscription is often not a membership, but a membership often encompasses a subscription. A membership is often an elevated and more powerful subscription that collectivizes and leverages the subscribers.
What They Have In Common
With both models, you often pay a fee and receive a ...
Read More
In a 2007 article in The New Yorker, Atul Gawande, a surgeon and an author, advocatedthat more hospitals use checklists. He cited many medical studies showing how checklists save lives (and money). Implementing one checklist, a hospital "…prevented forty-three infections and eight deaths, and saved two million dollars in costs." The startling part: the list was only five steps long! In other words, people don’t consistently follow...
Read More