What an honor to be featured in the Sunday edition of The Mercury News.
"It has been 40 years since Morhauser launched Annieglass in a tiny studio in downtown Santa Cruz... By the mid-1990s, then-first lady Hillary Clinton invited Morhauser to attend a White House celebration of American artists, and Morhauser had moved her company to her current 17,000-square-foot studio, allowing it to grow to the 22 employees it has now. The studio operates 30 kilns and turns out more than 20 ...
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A medium coffee at McDonald’s is $1.99. When a brand syncs with a retailer on Shop Local, it costs the brand $1.40 per month.
For $1.40, we do these seven things for our brand partner:
We sync an unlimited number of the brand’s products to the retailer's Shop Local Store. All updates, including price changes and new introduction launches, happen in real time. The retailer never has to click “download”
I was happy see that our friend Adam Sigel will be leading JK Adams. Please checkout the news below.
DORSET, Vt. —JK Adams has appointed Adam Sigel CEO.
Sigel, a seasoned sales executive and a consumer goods expert, succeeds Daniel Isaac, who has moved on to another role in Vermont, the company said.
Sigel most recently served as vice president of the Savannah Bee Company, a Georgia-based gourmet foods and gift company, and also served on the executive team at Mariposa, where he ...
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I was happy to see Tableware Today magazine share our experiences and lessons regarding the power of free shipping.
You're invited to read the article below:
.........................
THE LAST WORD
FREE SHIPPING PAYS OFF
by JASON SOLAREK
Most indie stores don’t have the technical ability or people power to track pricing and offer discounts like free shipping. Indie stores need this information or they’ll be left behind. This information can make a difference: in ...
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Bridge analyzed the websites for the top-40 selling brands in the tabletop and giftware industry. We assessed what promotions and discounts, such free shipping, brands offer. Bridge did this because a product's price, which is impacted by discounts, is often the leading factor when shopping online. More than 67% of the brands surveyed by Bridge offer free shipping.
I'm giving you a $200 finder's fee when you refer a store.
When you refer a store, the store will receive $268. It will receive $100 towards a wholesale order with your brand and a $168 credit towards their registry service with us. (My company is paying the $100 wholesale order credit.)
This offer is good through May 1, 2023.
Summary: you give a store $268 and you get $200. (Bridge ...
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How we can celebrate indie stores and promote sales by hosting a Save Local event.
February 23, 2023
When one thinks of shopping locally, some consider it an act of charity. One may pay more and get less selection. That’s not a recipe for success. In contrast, the world’s most successful retailers, Walmart and Amazon, operate on just the opposite principles: low prices and massive selection. When I’m in Walmart's Panama City Beach location, it’s so massive I feel like I’m in the Giants' stadium. Amazon sells 12m items on its website (350m if you count the third-...
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How to encourage registry customers to purchase from a registry by sharing previous gift givers' names
February 16, 2023
Your Bridge Store has an updated feature to encourage customers to complete a registry purchase. Your Bridge Store displays gift givers' names on a registry's list.
Previously, the gift givers' names were only displayed by rolling over "Purchases" at the top of a registry list.
Now, the gift givers are also displayed in a box at the footer of a registry's list.
In the example shown, we see a registry list at The Ivy House, a fine china store in Dallas. At the ...
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"A 2021 Harris Poll Consumer Shopping Study showed that 71% of Americans would prefer to buy from an independent retailer over a national chain, as long as they were equally convenient and reliable."
~ SpotOn
I believe these survey results. Shoppers want to shop local, but they don't want to sacrifice selection, price, or speed. Consumers will shop with your indie store if you can offer the same selection, price, and delivery speed as, say, Amazon. Is ...
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How setting goals for our new members can help them be more successful.
January 31, 2023
When growing our network, we consider what it takes to keep existing members and grow into other industries. Andrew Chen in The Cold Start Problem reports that Facebook famously wanted a user to get 10 friends in a week because then the person would likely use the service. Similarly, Slack said users with about 10 connections tend to become active users. My company currently doesn’t have such new user benchmarks and we need to develop them.
Adding New Retail Members to the Product...
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Our retailers recently told us that customers are calling and asking about non-existent brides, and brides are asking about non-existent registry gift lists (e.g. wedding registry lists, baby lists).
We investigated the issues and below is what we found.
What is Happening:
We found that many of these purchases are coming from registrants that open a ‘universal registry’ on websites such as Zola or MyRegistry. These universal registry services allow the registrant to add ...
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I discovered a page on Amazon’s site proclaiming that Amazon supports small businesses. That is news to me and many small businesses which have been attacked by Amazon, its deep pockets, and its army of millions of delivery people and thousands of warehouses. Amazon’s page says it helps small businesses, which it defines as having under 100 employees and less than $49 million in sales. (It says it uses Gartner’s definition.)
I'm giving you a $200 finder's fee when you refer a store.
When you refer a store, the store will receive $268. It will receive $100 towards a wholesale order with your brand and a $168 credit towards their registry service with us. (My company is paying the $100 wholesale order credit.)
Summary: you give a store $268 and you get $200. (Bridge covers the $468.)
In the book The Cold Start Problem, Andrew Chen says that the 'network effect’ is really three effects:
The acquisition effect
The engagement effect
The monetization effect
In the beginning, a business seeking to build a network has to concentrate on acquiring users, even if they are non-paying. Companies often give away the service, especially software companies, and we can see that with Facebook, Slack, TikTok, and many others. Bridge didn’t do ...
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More than 65% of brands surveyed by Bridge offer free shipping, while just 14% of indie stores do. Brands often charge just $118 to quality for free shipping, while stores charge $190 (a $72 difference). Where would you shop?
Bridge analyzed the websites for the top-40 selling brands in the tabletop and giftware industry. We assessed what promotions and discounts, such free shipping, brands offer. Bridge did this because a product's price, which is impacted by discounts, is often the leading ...
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With our retail members in the throes of the holiday season, it was nice to read an article by Retail Dive providing some insight into Q4 2022. Retail Dive, a retail industry publication, informs readers that big-box stores share much of the same friction as our indie retailers do. I appreciated the acknowledgement that independent stores may feel disruptions quicker and may even have an edge on providing a more superior customer experience to gaining loyalty. The good news is that there are ...
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When we brainstorm about making Bridge better, we want to turn over every stone. We explore many avenues, from increasing collaboration to lowering product prices to enhancing marketing. What if an improvement was right in front of us—constant to all of these concepts? Regardless of what feature we offer, there is one constant: navigation. Navigation is fundamental to allowing members to easily find what they need—and discover what they didn’t know they needed.
Your Bridge Store has an updated feature: You can now more easily manage who subscribes to emails, including products newsletters and wedding reminders. You can now more quickly view subscribers, as well as add and remove them.
Previously, one would see all subscribers’ emails in one field, with emails separated by a comma. To add a subscriber, one typed the team member's email into this field. With this update, all the subscribers appear in a vertical list. To add a subscriber, ...
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