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:
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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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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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When we talk about prices, there are two prices that are important:
The price that we charge clients.
The price our clients charge their customers.
We normally talk about the former, aka how our prices compare with other competitors, like Shopify or wholesale services like Faire.
Of increasing importance to us is what our retailers charge their customers. Walmart recently announced that it was taking brands to account and pressuring them to keep ...
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Ronald Reagan said, “If you’re explaining, you’re losing.” Reaganomics usually refers to tax cuts and trickle down economics, yet I propose that we take the Gipper’s quote and ask: How can simplicity contribute to a business's success?
When we share what leading companies do, we can often skip an explanation and sum it up in a brief sentence. Examples:
Today’s Gen Z gift registrants want to do everything online, often on their iPhone 14. They want to start a registry, add products, remove products, edit quantities, and view purchases. They don't want to call the store to do this.
In the adoption of digital tools, another trend is also at play: female shoppers are busier than before. Today, more women graduate from college than men. Women are increasingly doctors, CEOs, and world leaders. (Italy just welcomed its ...
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In the early 2000s, the board game Cranium became a hit. The game combined elements of Scrabble and Pictionary with the goal of helping more people enjoy playing a game. Richard Tait, who created Cranium and sold it to Hasbro in 2008 for $77.5m, passed away in July. Like Mr. Tait, I had been a paperboy, but he went beyond what I ever offered: he came up with a new service that sold breakfast sandwiches along his newspaper route. He increased profits and made customers happier. ...
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A new trend in retail is vacant shops in urban neighborhoods being converted to small warehouses. In the East Village on 10th Street, we see on the left the new warehouse model; on the right we see a traditional retailer. For the ‘store’ on the left, the customer orders via their mobile phone and then does a pickup or gets a delivery.
I’m seeing more of these ‘zombie stores’ around the city. Just in the East Village, I’ve seen four: ...
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We work tirelessly to help our customers. A good spot to see this is on our sale site’s pricing page, which lists 60+ features that clients receive—often for free. (Sometimes I think that we’re philanthropists. Twenty-five percent of retail clients pay nothing each month.) Each feature is one that we’ve labored over.
But, ironically, our hard work may get overlooked and under-appreciated if key psychological insights are overlooked by me. In his book ...
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While walking on 9th St. in Manhattan, I noticed an American Express sidewalk decal. This decal inspired me to create a Bridge sidewalk decal for indie stores.
I think that stating 'shop local' or 'shop small' misses many of the key desires by shoppers. I think that customers want low prices, lots of selection, and fast delivery. Those are the reasons they shop at Amazon and at other big box stores. Ask yourself: would you shop at a store that has less selection? Higher prices? Slower ...
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January 14, 2018
January 14, 2018
A friend of mine asked me about the buy local movement and young people. She wonders if young people (people under 40--gosh, I guess that excludes me?!) cared about the buy local 'movement.'
My response to her was that asking someone to buy local is sort of like asking someone to ignore the major principles of why people shop (aka ignore capitalism). The primary reasons we shop where we do is:
1. Selection. People want a wide variety of selectionβ¦aka: all the items you can find on Amazon.
How competitive are your prices? As if the market isn't competitive enough, Target reminds us in today's WSJ that low prices matter. How are you keeping up with prices on Amazon? Amazon is constantly sending bots to crawl our retailers' sites and check their prices in order to beat them. (We occasionally stop these bots because they slow down the server by making too many requests to it.) How are your brands handling discounting by Amazon? These are questions you want to ask to stay in business...
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May 7, 2016
May 7, 2016
Our Sidewalk Sale Rescheduled Mother Nature wasn't playing nice on May 1, so we rescheduled out sale on May 22 from 11-5pm. Join us and check out our amazing deals.
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