"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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We are pleased to announce the Nicolette Mayer Collection is ready to sync products via Bridge's Product Syncing service.
Produced by dedicated artisans in America, the Nicolette Mayer Collection offers over 1500 Art de la Table items. Nicolette Mayer is a lifestyle brand whose product categories include:
Placemats,
Coasters,
Acrylic trays,
Dinner and Cocktail Napkins,
Murals,
Candles,
Candy Dishes,
Pillows.
Placemats are available in both round and rectangular ...
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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.
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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"Today, virtually the entire publishing industry is rooting for Barnes & Noble — including most independent booksellers. Its unique role in the book ecosystem, where it helps readers discover new titles and publishers stay invested in physical stores, makes it an essential anchor in a world upended by online sales and a much larger player: Amazon."
At the Bridge ‘office’ (which stretches from Seattle to Brooklyn), we’re currently reading Jim Collin’s book Beyond Entrepreneurship 2.0. We’re reading the book together because it helps us learn insights into working together and running the best company we can. On page 275, Mr. Collins shares an anecdote about a group of workers at an airplane manufacturing facility during World War II. The workers found inspiration from meeting the crew that flew the planes they ...
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Yesterday I spoke with an independent jewelry store that was targeted by cybercriminals. The criminals created a ransomware attack and held the store’s computer data hostage. The store had to scramble to find backup data and reopen. The store called the FBI and didn’t pay. The hackers then sent phishing emails to all the store’s customers—attacking the store’s customers and trying to infect them.
Last February e-commerce company Shopify Inc. replaced the “Ottawa, Canada” dateline that began its press releases and earnings reports with a strange new one: “Internet, Everywhere.” The geographical shift came at the insistence of Shopify’s founder and chief executive officer, Tobi Lütke, who tends to view such matters through the prism of cold, hard logic. In May 2020, only a few months into the pandemic, he’d made the early, seemingly rash decision to...
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Retailers have had a difficult time in recent years, as brands have increasingly circumvented them. With the advent of e-commerce websites and social media, brands are pitching their wares directly to consumers and cutting out retailers.
I’ve sometimes wondered: What if the factory decides to do the same and cut out the brands? If the retailers don’t like it, how will the brands? Some businesses are now trying this. Services like Italic allow a consumer to bypass...
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I spotted this tequila advertisement today in New York City. The first thing that came to mind was not spring break, but rather a riff on the ad’s tagline. I thought, “ ‘Independent store’ does not mean selling alone.” Bridge helps more than 800 independent stores team up to share products and resources. We make running an online business easier. We give them a ‘shot’ at winning online. That’s something we can drink to.
HTI is an association that facilitates the opportunity to build better relationships between our 125 independent kitchenware retailer members and over 200 housewares vendor members. These improved relationships lead to a financially beneficial relationship between retailer & vendor businesses. Our vendors provide our retailer members with discounts and benefits that only an organization with substantial buying power can negotiate and obtain.
Once you become a member nothing changes in the ...
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I enjoyed today’s WSJ article about stores teaming up to take on Amazon. Since Bridge has collectivized 800 indie shops to push back against Amazon, we can relate to efforts to help stores team up and boost their communities.
The article mentions Shopify and its popularity among indie shops. Shopify, along with BigComerce, Big Cartel, Wix, and Magento, are platforms that have helped indies to grow online independent of Amazon.
While we appreciate any platform that helps indies...
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Today’s WSJ shares that independent stores, including hardware stores, book shops, and pharmacies, have teamed up to stop Amazon’s bad practices. The group, called Small Business Rising, seeks to use anti-trust laws to prevent Amazon marketplace from selling its own goods—which compete with retailers using the platform. Amazon has been shown to use a retailer’s customer and sales data and bypass the retailer (it’s own customer) in order to make a bigger profit. ...
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In last week's RetailDive, Kaarin Vembar penned an article about small businesses and their pains during the pandemic. Ms. Vembar and RetailDive promote the groundswell to e-commerce but sadly shortcut its existence in their very article.
She interviews the owner of Adorned Abode in Tacoma but doesn't add a link to the store's website--which would've boosted the store's Google ranking and increased clicks from readers, and she doesn't give much attention to the store's website offerings. ...
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Alec MacGillis shares in the Times how online shopping and Amazon in particular are wrecking havoc on retail.
Highlights:
Nationwide, 9,800 stores shuttered in 2019, among them 220 Sears stores.
Analysts predict that brick-and-mortar store closures could reach 25,000 by year’s end.
J.C. Penney, Neiman Marcus and J. Crew filed for bankruptcy, Macy’s furloughed nearly all of its 125,000 workers for months, and countless independent businesses have closed for good.
The health of our communities and even ourselves may depend on whether indie stores like Powell's succeeds.
Powell's Books, one of the nation's largest and best-known book retailers, has stopped selling on Amazon after 20+ years, shares RetailDive. The store cited how bad Amazon is long-term for itself and communities. The store realized it was sharpening its executioner’s sword, as Scott Galloway has said ruefully.
I found this quote from the owner insightful:...
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That is the question my family posed to me last night during our more-frequent FaceTime conversations.
With the passing Labor Day weekend, students entering their in-person or online school year, and the ending of a strange summer season during a global pandemic, people are looking forward to a time that can bring spirit and happiness to the darkness: the holidays.
But how holly and jolly will this holiday season be in terms of shopping? After all, the holidays are notorious ...
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RETAILERS AND BRANDS GRAVITATE TO BRIDGE AMIDST PANDEMIC
For Immediate Release
Businesses Rush to Bridge During Pandemic
July 27, 2020
New York, NY – Bridge, an online e-commerce community, saw significant increases in membership during the COVID-19 pandemic. Retail membership increased by 17% and nine brands joined the platform, including Lenox, Kate Spade, Dansk, and Richard Ginori.
Since the spring, eighty stores have joined Bridge’s e-commerce service, bringing the ...
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