An East Village Artist’s Death Prompts a Reflection on the State of Indie Retailers Today
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While thumbing through the Times, I noticed a smiling young woman’s picture in the obituaries. In the black and white photograph, she's standing on a fire escape with a historic building and a bridge in the distance. I was initially attracted to Ronni Solbert’s 1959 picture, yet I was even more drawn in by what I noticed next to her photo: a children&...
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In this e-commerce age, a store being found on page 1 of Google is very important. Online advertising has become much more expensive recently, making being found even more important. Being found in Google saves the store on costly advertising.
Sometimes a potential client asks me if their store uses Bridge Store software, will their store rank higher in Google? The answer: Yes. In this example, we Googled "gift registry texas." We see that Bridge retailers claimed ...
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George Lois, the adverting icon, wrote Damn Good Advice for those in the advertising field. In one section, he encourages us to highlight a truth. This may even include an assumption about a perceived weakness. Following George Lois' advice, I came up with these two pieces of ad copy for Bridge:
We’re smaller than Shopify. And that’s why you get more with us.
Shopify watches its stock price. We watch our customers' needs.
The Wall St. Journal shares a story that many indie stores may be able to relate to: the challenge of selling your business. The Journal shares issues that arise when ownership changes. Small, brick-and-mortar stores are more likely to face a big decline in sales than, say, a large IT company.
Excerpt:
"The revenue drop following the sale of a business can range from an expected 20% to 30% in the case of an IT-services provider to 50% in the case of a hair salon, says Sam ...
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In the movie Glengarry Glen Ross, a motivational speaker played by Alec Baldwin addresses a group of salesmen. He writes three letters vertically on the chalkboard, “A B C.” He explains that the acronym means "Always Be Closing."
The way that Baldwin's character thinks about sales, I may think about reading. I think of: "ABR,” Always Be Reading. Whether it's breakfast, lunch, or dinner, I try to get in a page or two of the Times, Wall St. ...
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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're happy to see four brands promote Bridge in Tableware Today's August/September 2022 issue.
In each advertisement, the brand displays Bridge’s ‘B’ logo in the lower left or right of the page. The brands that promote Bridge include:
Bordhallo Pinheiro
Carmel Ceramica
Pampa Bay
Vista Alegre
The brands show the Bridge logo so that retailers reading the publication will know that they can easily sell the products shown. Since e-commerce makes up 30% of U...
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Stop at Glassworks and Cheeks during the Annual Shadyside Sidewalk Sale, taking place Wednesday, July 27th - Sunday, July 31st from 10 am to 5 pm each day. Come to Walnut Street and it's side streets for the best deals of the season. Glassworks and Cheeks offer the best deals of the year!
The Sale features a variety of your favorite small business shops and boutiques from the Shadyside community. Many local businesses will participate, and most retailers offer their best prices of the year, up ...
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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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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.
Retail Dive reports on Amazon's lazy claims that it cares about stopping counterfeits. Counterfeiters on Amazon may steal a brand's product design, name, and product pictures. When a brand reports this to Amazon, Amazon often does: nothing.
This is an issue for American brands. For example:
A brands creates a product. The brand pays for research and development.
Brand may pay to have it made in America.
Brand takes professional pictures of the finished product.
Excerpts:
- A report produced by groups seeking to block it pointed out that the number of Amazon facilities in New Jersey grew to 49 from one between 2013 and 2020, helping to nearly triple the number of warehouse workers in the state, to about 70,000.
- The Port Authority revealed the proposed lease with Amazon in August, the day its board voted to authorize the deal.
- Under the proposed deal, Amazon tentatively committed to investing $125 million in renovating two buildings ...
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Bridge has teamed up with 23 premium brands to offer an exciting promotion. A retailer can place an order at the Atlanta show and get $200 off its wholesale order. The store will receive a free Bridge account. The account will contain the products the store ordered. With this solution, a store can quickly promote and sell what it just bought at the show. The store's Bridge account will also contain other products that the brand offers. With this approach, the stores can quickly...
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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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Glassworks can help you get ready for those picnics, parties, and gatherings. We have serving pieces, alfresco melamine dinnerware, and red, white, & blue decor. Pictured: MacKenzie-Childs Royal Check items. Stop at the Shadyside store to see the full gambit of options. Have a Happy 4th of July!
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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If someone has an American flag flying on their porch and Amazon boxes often at their doorstep, maybe they should take the flag down and put up a Chinese flag. Amazon appears to be profiting by cutting out much our domestic retail community and instead helping Chinese businesses. And don’t expect Amazon to pay much in local taxes either.
This past weekend’s WSJ shares how third-party sellers, many of them from China, have flooded Amazon with spurious listings, leaving ...
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