E-commerce is hammering stores, shares a study appearing in RetailDive. Each e-commerce job kills four traditional jobs, and it may help close 30k stores in the next 5 years.
RetailDive excerpts:
E-commerce has been a net negative — an agent of "destructive destruction" — for the retail industry writ large, according to a new study from credit insurance company Euler Hermes. The study found that 56,000 stores, or 10.7% of the
Many of us will be with our family and friends this Thursday. I'll take a moment then to give thanks to all the indie retailers that enrich our communities. I'll thank the indie designers that fill our stores and homes with beautiful products.
When I'm in my friend's kitchen, someone may say they need a new spatula from Amazon, or after dinner ask Alexa to turn on Amazon TV. When they do, I'll consider those actions in light of the holiday. I'll share why this is important to consider.
Market buildings are looking down the barrel of a gun. To find out why, check out my article in this month's Tableware Today.
THE LAST WORD
CHART YOUR FUTURE BEFORE BIG TECH DOES
by JASON SOLAREK
Market buildings are starting to take digital seriously. Why, finally? Because Amazon is nipping at retailers’ heels? No. Because Zola is stealing indie stores’ registry business? No. Sadly, the main thing that’s brought markets up to speed has to do with their own dollars and ...
Read More
November 16, 2019
November 16, 2019
When we make products overseas, are we long-term weakening our businesses and our communities, and in fact strengthening the product’s country of origin? Today’s WSJ makes the point that foreign countries that produce the goods are the ones gaining high-tech jobs and therefore the high-flying lifestyles. As you may have heard, every day a new person becomes a millionaire in China. Can we say the same in America? Historically, businesses and economists approved the strategy of “innovate here, ...
Read More
November 2, 2019
November 2, 2019
Amazon is Winning Because of: Bots
Amazon most likely has lower prices than most stores--including yours, shares Retail Dive.
Excerpt: "With the holiday sales season underway, Amazon is pricing 20% below other online retailers on average in key product categories, according to a study by Profitero."
You may ask, how is Amazon wining this online price war? I'll share my answer: Bots. Amazon has unleashed an army of bots to crawl and scrub all of your data and websites, and report it back to Amazon ...
Read More
October 28, 2019
October 28, 2019
Where is retail growing? Warehouses, shares today’s WSJ. Blackstone, the private equity company, has amassed 800 million square feet of warehouse space.
View Post
October 27, 2019
October 27, 2019
Does traffic seem worse? It may be your neighbors’ 1.5 million daily packages being delivered, shares today’s Times.
My neighborhood is bombarded by trucks—and delivery people often ringing every apartment buzzer in a building to contact just one apartment.
Interesting stats from the article: + Homes now get more packages delivered than businesses. + Traffic speeds have slowed over the last decade. + 2 million square Feet of warehouse space is being built in NYC. + Carbon dioxide emissions ...
Read More
October 25, 2019
October 25, 2019
From which store would you shop, the one offering free 2-day shipping or the one charging $105 for standard delivery?
The first one, of course. Which leads us to the rules your store needs to follow:
Rule #1: Do NOT seek to break even on shipping Rule #2: Seek to LOSE money on shipping!
Most retailers share with me their fear about losing money on shipping. What ends up happening? They end up losing: the entire sale. What about that $1,000 Herend order? The store is less likely to get it because it'...
Read More
October 22, 2019
October 22, 2019
What's on your store's holiday list? How about charging featured brands $500,000?
Bloomberg shares how Amazon and Walmart use a 'pay to play' scheme to charge brands:
What sets Amazon apart from other retailers is how much it charges for space on its toy page over the holidays. A narrow strip across the top of the web page costs $500,000 per month in November and December, up ...
Read More
October 17, 2019
October 17, 2019
Christofle Flatware Promotion At Glassworks And Pizzazz Shopping Event!
A Christofle promotion, just in time for the holidays! From now through October 31st, buy 10 Christofle 5-piece flatware place settings and receive 2 sets at no charge! Come to Glassworks in Shadyside to see samples and place your order. If ordering online, please call or email us to coordinate your 2 free sets. This promotion is good on all types: Silver Plated, Sterling, and Stainless Steel.
While stores are closing, Bridge sales are growing.
Bridge is processing $4k more per day in orders for our retailers compared to the same period last year. This boost is particularly relevant considering more than 7k brick-and-mortar stores will close this year.
When viewed annually, this $4k increase will results in more than $1.2 million dollars in additional sales for our retailers, brands, and reps using the Bridge network. As a reference, in our early years, we did about $1m in sales in ...
Read More
September 26, 2019
September 26, 2019
CNBC shares that "by the end of this year, 12,000 stores are projected to close, and Amazon stands to benefit."
Bridge's Product Share page echoes this prediction and attributes it to how hard data is to deal with:
"In the last 20 years, there has been little change in how stores add items to their website....This has produced a clear winner: Amazon. Amazon has cornered 47% of the e-commerce market by adopting different techniques and business models to add hundreds of millions of items to its ...
Read More
September 25, 2019
September 25, 2019
Amy Stavis, Editor of Tableware Today, reminds us that where there is food there is tableware, and that means there is ample opportunity to sell to Millennials who often claim to be foodies.
View Post
August 29, 2019
August 29, 2019
Amazon and Chinese companies have teamed up to bypass Main Street and ship goods directly to doorsteps. This is hurting American manufacturing as well as local city governments. To accomplish this, they're misleading Americans by putting out press releases that cherry-pick statistics.
Follow these 3 steps to see the issue at hand:
1. In an Amazon press release last week, Amazon claimed:
"Independent third-party sellers – primarily small and medium-sized businesses – ...
Read More
I went into a small shop in New York City yesterday and admired all their nice tableware. It offered mugs, cups, plates, drinking glasses, and vases—all items that are great for gift registries.
The store was empty. I thought it may be a good time ask the store manager if the store offered an online registry. He replied "yes." I was surprised because there was no signage in the store that said it offered a gift registry. I shared with him what Bridge is and explained that we...
Read More
August 19, 2019
August 19, 2019
Nordstrom stock is down 52% in the last 12 months. Only Macy’s stock performs worse in the S&P 500 retail index.
It’s clear that Nordstrom should not have bought HautLook in 2011 and Trunk Club in 2014. In 2016, Nordstrom wrote down the value of Trunk Club by half of its $350m purchase. That’s $175m in value it desperately needed to spend elsewhere to compete with Amazon. Each million dollar mistake today results tens of millions in lost opportunity next year. Mistakes have exponential ...
Read More
August 18, 2019
August 18, 2019
Is Amazon a 'Retail Hacker'?
Amazon may be spying on your business. It may be crawling your website, checking your prices, and then stealing your customers. If this sounds creepy, it is.
Every week over the last few years, I have found Amazon-hosted bots crawling my 400+ retailers' web pages. In the example shown, I'm displaying a bot that crawls my site and its IP address (34.217.74.229). I look up its IP address (https://www.infobyip.com/ip-34.217.74.229.html) and we see that it's hosted at ...
Read More
What company in the tabletop industry has invested in a tech company? I don't know of one. I believe our industry should be doing what UPS does and investing in tech--and I'll explain why.
As today's WSJ shares, UPS has a venture capital arm and it has this because smart businesses know that most businesses are becoming more like: software businesses. Therefore, businesses have to ‘buy’ that know-how by investing in a tech company. UPS knows that it doesn't have the internal tech know-how to...
Read More
August 8, 2019
August 8, 2019
I read the New York Times and want to ask: Are we sharpening our executioner's sword? That is what FedEx wondered as it helped Amazon grow by delivering its packages. Finally, FedEx woke up and decided it's better to make less money tomorrow than help usher in its death in the near future. As the Times reports, FedEx is terminating its ground delivery agreement with Amazon at the end of August, thereby passing on the delivery of millions of packages.
Amazon has historically partnered with ...
Read More