How to view information about a registry on one page.
August 31, 2023
Your Shop Local Store has a new feature: We've made it easier for you and your registrants to view an overview of a registry. There is now a new Registry Overview page that displays information about a registry at a glance.
Previously, you or your registrant would need to visit different registry-related pages to view many of these links. This feature reduces the number of clicks needed to access pages.
The Registry Overview page displays the following information...
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How we can acquire new prospects by leveraging our existing network of customers.
June 2, 2023
In Andrew Chen’s book The Cold Start Problem, he breaks the network effect into three parts: engagement, acquisition, and economize. At Shop Local, we rely on the network effect and its three parts. I feel that we’re succeeding in terms of engagement but need improvement in acquisition.
Engagement
We use the 64,000 products in our Syncing service to engage 1,200 our retail clients. We email them new intros, price updates, archived items for these synced products. Once they ...
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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”
Google is often considered the first stop when searching for information. Looking for a product? You'll likely head to Amazon.com, where due to its 350m product listings, 25% of purchases reportedly start. Facebook will be your go-to for finding friends and family due to its 2b profiles of people. Airbnb lets you search 5.6m places to stay. These businesses are likely your choice because people want a massive selection when conducting a search. Many of the world's most ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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.
Businesses like Walmart, Disney, and Discovery are bundling services and adding the “+” suffix to denote them (e.g. Disney+, Discovery+, W+, etc.). In a recent article in RetailDive, we learn that Walmart is giving its customers free, six-month trial Spotify accounts. I think W+ bundling services is smart. Last week, I compared running a gym to offering software. I spoke about bundling services with things that people like to increase their usage, such as work ...
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As you may already know, production of stainless steel flatware has perhaps been the most impacted business in tableware during the Covid crisis. This is where we stand with Couzon: our factory that produces the "U.S. only" patterns of Le Perle, Lyrique and Consul was closed for most of the summer due to Covid issues. They are just now getting back up and running and slowly at best. Orders that we placed over the summer we will not see until May of ...
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You can now more easily see updates from business friends. We've updated the Activity drop down to group related content. For example, we group news, reviews, and product-related updates together respectively.
In the example shown, on the left is the old version of the drop down and on the right is the updated version.
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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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Will your store or brand be sued? It's increasingly likely. Lawyers are targeting retailers using the Americans with Disability Act as a reason to sue your store. In a presentation by William M. Jay, Andrew Kim, and Tim Springer, we find some startling statistics about the increase in ADA lawsuits.
Retail websites are the top target of ADA lawsuits.
In the last 3 years, ADA lawsuits are up more than 200%.
Just 20 firms account for almost 90% of the lawsuits.
Many businesses are struggling during the state-mandated shelter-in-place orders. One industry that is weathering the storm well is technology. Technology companies often deliver services digitally, which obviously makes them ideal to side-step these orders--but they often utilize another feature that makes them profitable now and in general: subscriptions.
Scott Galloway, a business leader and host of an online business class called 'The Sprint,' recently brought to my attention the ...
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