You’ve likely had a vodka-Red Bull cocktail in your lifetime, which was followed by a hangover for you—but helped drink co-founder Dietrich Mateschitz amass a $20b fortune. Mateschitz, who passed away last week at the age of 78, discovered the drink in the 1980s in Thailand and built it into a global brand. He promoted Red Bull, whose name is a translation of the drink’s Thai name "Krating Daeng,” via a variety of clever marketing initiatives. In the early 2000s, I ...
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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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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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Whenever I visit my 76-year-old mom in Myrtle Beach, SC, she picks me up and the oldies station is playing in her car. I’ve tried changing that dial, and one has a better chance of outmaneuvering tennis star Daniil Medvedev. I imagine the oldies music brings her back to her youth. I read a study that people’s favorite song is often when they were 17 years old. That’s right: the 'best songs’ may not be the best songs but rather simply be what you heard in ...
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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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We All Do!
A word popped into my head this morning as I was driving to the office.
“Polite company.” Hmmm, now that is a thought that can take many twists and turns.
The social interaction that goes with the meal is more important than the plates .But we love it when the environment and the conversation dovetale into a memorable enjoyable gathering.
To have a company or business characterized by courtesy is one way to think of it, but that is not what we are talking ...
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About two weeks ago in Charleston, SC, in spin class where I sounded like I was getting a hair transplant, I enjoyed being at once together with my friends in the class and yet competing with them. When they peddled harder and stood up, I wanted to also. Our competing didn't mean that there was one winner and everyone else lost. It wasn’t a zero-sum game. In that spin class, we all won. After that class, we all felt great. Competition is an ...
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We've added a new feature to your Bridge: customers and staff can now more quickly access your Bridge.
We've given you QR codes that point to your important pages.
Over the last two years, QR codes have grown in popularity. QR codes are a quick way to access websites--especially sub pages of a website.
Without QR codes, customers and staff have to Google your website. Then, once they find it, they have to navigate to the correct page, such as the registry home page or the reviews
How are brands helping their stores--and themselves? They are telling retailers that Bridge is a sales solution for them. For example, Pampa Bay doubled its sales vs. last year on the Bridge platform. One way Pampa Bay increased its sales is by consistently promoting its Bridge service across various mediums. When one visits the Pampa Bay site, one can see the platforms the brand uses in the upper right-hand corner. We can see the brand uses Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and Bridge. Pampa...
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Scott Galloway, a business leader and NYU professor, shares that we're now spending over 4 hours a day on our mobile phones--up from just 20 minutes in 2010. (…I wrote part of this post on my iPhone.) What does this mean? Lots of opportunities for Amazon--as well as Facebook, Instagram, and other tech titans--to sell to us. Our cell phones are, in essence, 1,000 'buy buttons' in our pockets (or on our nightstands) that encourage us to buy stuff online, any time of the day.
We are very pleased to present our 2021 CHRISTMAS WINDOW at Live With It ON MAIN STREET in Peckville PA !!! … Please VISIT US SOON because our shelves are NOW FILLED WITH GIFTS FOR THE HOLIDAYS and for all occasions !!! … PS: This year our Main Window features our TOY’S FANTASY and TOY'S DELIGHT Collections by Villeroy & Boch !
CURRENT IN-STORE BUSINESS HOURS @ Live With It --- 1503 Main Street, Suite 1, Peckville, PA 18452 (570-489-4060)
• Open Monday thru ...
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The Pine Needle will be closed Saturday, October 30-Wednesday, November 5 to get ready for our Christmas Open House. We will reopen at 10:00 Thursday, November 4. Please join us as we kick off the Christmas Season. The Pine Needle will be transformed into a beautiful, Christmas Wonderland!
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Many brands are growing their DTC (D2C) channels, but a recent report by BMO Capital Markets suggests they may be a shooting themselves in the foot--which their retailers may be happy to hear. The report shares that wholesale is more profitable overall than selling direct.
A few things have enabled brands to grow their DTC aspirations:
Selling to customers via the brand's own e-commerce website.
Tracking customers using social media and ad networks (aka surveillance,
We work tirelessly to help our customers. A good spot to see this is on our sale site’s pricing page, which lists 60+ features that clients receive—often for free. (Sometimes I think that we’re philanthropists. Twenty-five percent of retail clients pay nothing each month.) Each feature is one that we’ve labored over.
But, ironically, our hard work may get overlooked and under-appreciated if key psychological insights are overlooked by me. In his book ...
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In the news each day, there are reports of price increases (inflation) that average 4%. When a product's price increases 4% or 45%, this often hurts a retailer. Reason: the retailer may not know about this price change till after it has sold the item. Therefore, the retailer sold the item at 45% less than what it should have. If the item is a special order and the retailer does not have it in stock, it may barley make a profit on the order.
Bridge's product sharing service helps ...
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I found this article about the new book 'Ding Dong! Avon Calling!' inspiring. Avon empowered many people to be in business for themselves. Bridge believes in a similar mantra of empowering people to start and run a retail business.
I appreciate Avon promoting an espirit de corps to motivate its thousands of sales people. I share news like this very post for the same reason. Our platform is designed to help members share and support each other--much like Avon's literature for sales ...
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In this video I share why retailers don’t add a brand’s products to their websites and therefore fail the brand and themselves in the e-commerce race.
Bridge’s Smart Products marketing service ‘bridges’ the gaps in online distribution. Bridge's service helps brands show 100% of the brand’s products on an infinite number of retailers’ Bridge Stores. The retailer can use Bridge Store as a stand-...
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Today’s WSJ shares that independent stores, including hardware stores, book shops, and pharmacies, have teamed up to stop Amazon’s bad practices. The group, called Small Business Rising, seeks to use anti-trust laws to prevent Amazon marketplace from selling its own goods—which compete with retailers using the platform. Amazon has been shown to use a retailer’s customer and sales data and bypass the retailer (it’s own customer) in order to make a bigger profit. ...
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What if there was a way to cut your labor costs and boost your sales? There is. Your employees work the cash register, stock shelves, clean, and provide customer service. They also: update your website. As you know, these days customers expect a website to offer tens of thousands of products. Amazon has hundreds of millions of products. You have to add products to your site to survive.
You need someone to add products to your website, then update those products. On ...
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