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.
Bridge helps 1,000 indie stores offer gift registries. We've handled 70,000 registries. One trend we've noticed over the year is The Knot, a leading wedding website provider, is minimizing sales opportunities for indie stores. The Knot has created partnerships with big-box players, including Crate & Barrel, Macy's, Bloomingdale's, and Amazon, and relegated the indie stores to the bottom of the bride's page.
In this example, we see the indie stores displayed at the very bottom ...
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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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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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My friend works at the Swiss running shoemaker ON. She recently texted me and suggested I try their running shoes. Three weeks later, I was handling two boxes of their Swiss engineered shoes. On one ON shoe, there is a little Swiss flag and the words “Swiss Engineering” printed. When I get a pair of Nike’s, they don’t say "Beaverton-engineering" or "US-engineering." Nor do Adidas shoes proclaim “German engineering.” ...
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Do you love a great deal on a t-shirt or TV? Sure, we all do. Yet, sometimes when we shop, the lower the price we pay, the less we pay: people. People that make the goods (factory workers) and people that sell the goods (aka indie store owners) are the victims in the discount-pricing rush.
Today’s Times shares that making a bathing suit in Sir Lanka costs about $4 per unit while in Portugal it may cost $16. In NYC, the minimum wage is $15/hour—making production in NYC ...
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We’ve chatted about the importance of checklists. Checklists can be checklists literally as well as figuratively (i.e. software). Checklists help us order our thoughts and actions. Yet, the last step on each checklist should be: removing as many checklist steps as possible. This ironic strategy is necessary because steps inherently are friction, and friction is our enemy. We want to help our clients avoid the drag of clicks and thinking.
Beatriz Ball's gleaming GIFTABLES Ocean Crab Wine Coaster is topped by a sculptural miniature crab. Ideal gift for the coastal wine lover, and sure to become a beach house favorite.
Designed to hold a wine bottle, the versatile item can also be used for serving nuts or other little nibbles.
Beatriz Ball's GIFTABLES Collection features the best design elements of its bestselling collections in compact sizes, all boxed for effortless gifting. Great gift for guys!
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This week's Times shares that brides are increasingly asking for cash gifts. This trend pulls back the curtain on the underbelly of wedding gifts. Over the last 20 years, a trend emerged where a bride would ask for a traditional gift (i.e. a crystal champagne flute set, a fine china plate, etc.) but then redeem the credit for a television or vacuum. The stores that were especially adept at this were the big-box stores with a wide variety of offerings like Macy's and Target. They would use ...
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Time to graduate to a new level of sophistication!
Beatriz Ball’s shimmering GIFTABLES Sierra Croc Frame in a champagne gold tone features a sumptuously textured crocodile-inspired surface rendered fresh and new with a proprietary metallic finish. Designed to display a 4x6 photo (vertically or horizontally), the eye-catching frame looks stunning on a grad’s desk, shelf, or side table. The delightfully decorative piece adds a modern new edge to Beatriz Ball’s award-winning ...
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Your Bridge has a new feature: you can more easily message friends about products. On each item's page, there is now a "Message via Bridge" link. When you click this link, a modal will appear, letting you select your friend and share the item. If you wish, you can include a customized message. When you share the message, a message alert will appear when the member views their Bridge account. They will also receive an email alert that you sent them a message.
Bridge has updated how a store records a purchase for a registry list. This method uses the best practice for creating a digital copy of an order. Stores need to add a purchase to a gift list for a variety of reasons, including:
A customer purchased a gift in-store.
A customer purchased a gift via telephone.
A customer purchased online via Bridge, and then called the store to add to the purchase.
A customer purchased a gift via another online outlet (
In a 2007 article in The New Yorker, Atul Gawande, a surgeon and an author, advocatedthat more hospitals use checklists. He cited many medical studies showing how checklists save lives (and money). Implementing one checklist, a hospital "…prevented forty-three infections and eight deaths, and saved two million dollars in costs." The startling part: the list was only five steps long! In other words, people don’t consistently follow...
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When I flew home yesterday from Charleston, while most people were seeking relief from their sunburns and reminiscing about their vacations, I was delving into The Wall St. Journal’s profile on Tracy Britt Cool, an ex- Berkshire Hathaway star. Mrs. Cool’s new company Kanbrick invests in businesses with $10m - $50m in revenue. What does Mrs. Cool look for when investing in a company? People and moats.
At Bridge, we’re reading Jim Collins’ Beyond ...
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Stores and brands sometimes ask us: How does Bridge compare to Faire?
I thought we'd compare the two service providers.
Similarities: Bridge & Faire
Audience. Both service the retail industry. In particular, both service brands and retailers. Bridge also services sales reps, and Faire tries to steer clear of them--which is one reason reps don't like Faire much.
Delivery method. Both are online platforms.
Service offered. Faire is a wholesale marketplace. It
Six of the many unique religious gift ideas from Beatriz Ball. Make great heirloom presents for baby showers, baptisms, first communion, confirmation, graduation, birthdays, and holidays.All boxed for effortless gifting!
•Save precious mementos of your little one's first years in the exquisite BABY Peek-A-Boo Cross Oval Keepsake Box shown above. The lidded metal box features an embossed cross on the top and contains a "peek-a-boo" surprise--another cross--sculpted on the base ...
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Stylishly add great visual texture to your bathroom, living room or office with this handcrafted tissue cover from Calaisio made from organic vines. Its natural warm rustic three-tone finish converts your plain tissue box into a beautiful decorative piece.
CALAISIO
natural elegance, extraordinary durability
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Jeff Lawson, CEO of Twilio, a software company valued at $28 billion, was recently interviewed in the Wall St. Journal. When he shared who his advisors are, I was surprised to see Danny Meyer, the restaurant kingpin who owns Shake Shack (another publicly-traded company). Mr. Lawson read Mr. Meyer’s book “Setting the Table” and was impressed to learn about the difference between service and hospitality. Service is the delivery of the technical aspects of ...
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There are approximately 40 online e-commerce providers. These software providers help other businesses sell online by offering them the ability to run an online store. These providers include Bridge as well as Shopify, Magento, Big Commerce, BigCartel, Square, and Weebly. Does Bridge offer a different (better?) experience than these other platforms? We believe the answer is yes. We also think our 960 retail clients agree: 99.7% of our retailers retain our service each month.