I noticed this ad for Big Ass Fans and was struck by the word “destroyer.” That’s a strong, powerful, memorable word. I wondered what wording we’d use if we were to run a full-page ad.
Large, well-funded entities are constantly seeking to swipe indie business—that’s aggression. We’re giving indies figurative swords, shields, and helmets to fight back.
Our full-page ad may state: “We Arm the Indies With Digital Weapons.&...
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Red carpets to a little something extra to treat ourselves. These treats will pair beautifully with Calaisio`s rustic custom, handmade sectional trays. Includes porcelain dish, available in 2 and 3 compartments.
In this week's New Yorker magazine, Charles Duhigg explores how venture capitalists may be harming our businesses. The article shares that instead of the best company winning, the charismatic charlatan with the most venture capital backing may be winning. In WeWork's case, the company almost won by reaching its IPO. Yet, even bottomless buckets of money couldn't save the company from the economics of office sharing--and its wildcard CEO Adam Neumann.
We have a few businesses in our retail ...
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The Pine Needle Christmas Open House will be November 5,6,7 and 9th. The store will be closed November 2-4 so the elves can work their Christmas Magic. Save 20% off all in-store merchandise. Please safely shop with us and wear a mask.
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The health of our communities and even ourselves may depend on whether indie stores like Powell's succeeds.
Powell's Books, one of the nation's largest and best-known book retailers, has stopped selling on Amazon after 20+ years, shares RetailDive. The store cited how bad Amazon is long-term for itself and communities. The store realized it was sharpening its executioner’s sword, as Scott Galloway has said ruefully.
I found this quote from the owner insightful:...
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Marchesa for Lenox gets a shout-out in this weekend’s Wall Street Journal. The article shares show homebound people are treating themselves by using fine china more frequently.
Lenox will soon join the Smart Brand program.
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Material Possessions, a gift shop in Illinois, needed a quick solution to boost its online presence. With Amazon and Covid-19 nipping at indie stores' heels, stores need to quickly boost their online offering.
In just 24 hours, Material Possessions opened a Bridge account and is currently offering 15,000+ products for sale. The retailer can sell these products directly from its Bridge Store--or it can export the products and import them into its parent website (https://...
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Busch beer is having a bit of fun with the havoc Covid is wrecking. Busch's contest:
Busch is picking 250 winners to share how they are dealing with their canceled weddings.
Affected couples need to post a photo of themselves to Instagram or Twitter with an explanation of how they plan to celebrate given the circumstances, and use the hashtags #BuschWeddingGift and #Sweepstakes.
E-commerce sites get 21% of their traffic from organic Google searches, followed by Facebook (9.6%) and Instagram (1.5%), shares a study b Oribi. In other words, boosting your Google ranking is twice as important as posting on Facebook because more than 2x of your sales come from Google.
Sadly, I see many stores spending their 'marketing efforts' posting Facebook content--thereby helping Facebook sell ads to the store's competitors--and the stores inadvertently ignore the bigger sales ...
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February 29, 2020
February 29, 2020
Think that your business should be making big bucks selling online? Wrong. Most businesses lose money online and have unprofitable online operations. Walmart’s online operations and Wayfair both lose money, and thousands of other businesses do, too.
There is a popular myth that online sellers are casino-like winners with the winning slot machine bells sounding with each order—generating buckets of quarters (profit) for the business. Casinos often produce losers, and most ...
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Target now sources 80% of its online orders from stores, not warehouses, shares the Wall St. Journal.
Stores have less foot traffic (foot traffic to U.S. stores fell about 6.2% on Black Friday ) and more online shopping (online sales reached $7.4 billion on Black Friday, up from $6.2 billion last year), forcing stores to convert 'floor' employees into roles dealing with e-commerce and shipping. "At the Brooklyn store around 80 workers handle internet orders, collecting products from shelves or...
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Market buildings are looking down the barrel of a gun. To find out why, check out my article in this month's Tableware Today.
THE LAST WORD
CHART YOUR FUTURE BEFORE BIG TECH DOES
by JASON SOLAREK
Market buildings are starting to take digital seriously. Why, finally? Because Amazon is nipping at retailers’ heels? No. Because Zola is stealing indie stores’ registry business? No. Sadly, the main thing that’s brought markets up to speed has to do with their own dollars and ...
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October 2, 2019
October 2, 2019
Should your store offer financing to customers? Todayβs WSJ suggests the answer is βyesβ based upon the automobile industry making more on financing than the car sales themselves.
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October 2, 2019
October 2, 2019
Sparkling and playful, Connect the Dots dishes are great to use with other Herend patterns but are equally gregarious having the spotlight all to themselves.
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September 24, 2019
September 24, 2019
Back in stock! As seen in Traditional Home Magazine. These are not offered in very many cities because Florence wants to keep them all for themselves!
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August 18, 2019
August 18, 2019
Is Amazon a 'Retail Hacker'?
Amazon may be spying on your business. It may be crawling your website, checking your prices, and then stealing your customers. If this sounds creepy, it is.
Every week over the last few years, I have found Amazon-hosted bots crawling my 400+ retailers' web pages. In the example shown, I'm displaying a bot that crawls my site and its IP address (34.217.74.229). I look up its IP address (https://www.infobyip.com/ip-34.217.74.229.html) and we see that it's hosted at ...
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August 8, 2019
August 8, 2019
I read the New York Times and want to ask: Are we sharpening our executioner's sword? That is what FedEx wondered as it helped Amazon grow by delivering its packages. Finally, FedEx woke up and decided it's better to make less money tomorrow than help usher in its death in the near future. As the Times reports, FedEx is terminating its ground delivery agreement with Amazon at the end of August, thereby passing on the delivery of millions of packages.
Amazon has historically partnered with ...
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July 16, 2019
July 16, 2019
What says summer better than our Banana Leaf Platter? Too bad we can't fan ourselves with it.
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First read:
There are millions of indie stores in the world who don’t get to succeed online. They get ripped off by web designers and coders, pay more in local taxes than big tech companies, don’t have access to cheap money from Wall St. (like big tech companies), and can’t protect themselves from hackers looking to steal credit cards. They are prevented them from running their business, helping their customers, and servicing their communities. Due to these expenses and ...
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