363 Results:
March 8, 2012
March 8, 2012
The Wall St. Journal profile's Thomas Keller, and mentions Keller's Raynaud hospitality tableware.
Wall St. Journal
March 8, 2012
By VIBHUTI PATEL
The only American chef to win three Michelin stars for two restaurants simultaneously, Thomas Keller is renaissance man of food. Owner of 13 restaurants on two coasts, including Napa Valley's landmark French Laundry and Manhattan's Per Se, he has sold half a million copies of his "French Laundry
...
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October 16, 2011
October 16, 2011
We enjoyed this article by Deborah Needleman which appeared in the Wall Street Journal. Our store is known for crafting many of the trends mentioned in this aricle, including tips 1 and 9. The porcelain monkeys she praises are by Mottahedeh ($145).
10 Odd, Yet Essential, Elements of Style
Decorating today may be more relaxed, but that means it's up to you to give your home spirit and charm
The era of the perfect home has passed. This is
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September 17, 2011
September 17, 2011
This article from today's Wall St. Journal shares marketing techniques used by Whole Foods and others to market goods. I think retailers, brands, and sales reps. may use it for inspiration about how they may market their items.
Beginning of article:
By MARTIN LINDSTROM
As someone who's been on the frontlines of the branding wars, I've spent countless hours with CEOs, advertising executives and marketing mavens at some of the biggest companies in...
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September 11, 2011
September 11, 2011
I liked this article by Matt Ridley in the WSJ about the innovation of reducing prices. We often think of entrepreneurship as inventing something new; there are also those that find ways to make what exists but with a new twist that brings the price down and brings the item/service to the masses.
Excerpts:
A feature of innovation is that the greatest impact of a new idea comes not when the light bulb goes on over the geek's ...
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April 17, 2011
April 17, 2011
The following article from Advertising Age says that consumers wish to do more business online, but that companies may not be adequately meeting him/her there. Ad Age included a survey that companies can take to measure their communication preparedness. I'm including it with this post.
MARKETERS FAILING INTERACTIVE PART OF INTERACTIVE MARKETING
Forrester Study: Consumers Want Cross-Channel Engagement, but Companies Are Falling Behind
Published: April 03...
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October 3, 2010
October 3, 2010
When considering how to spend one's time and money in building a business, it may be beneficial to look at predictions for the future. Most estimates predict that online shopping will increase. Conversely, retailers' budgets to add product to their websites will stay the same or shrink. Many companies have been cutting employees during the recession. With that in mind, we see that consumer demand will increase...
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July 11, 2010
July 11, 2010
I agree with these excerpts from the Advertising Age's article on CAT:
Don't separate interactive
"The best way to make un-ambitious work is to set up a separate group called 'interactive,'" said Matt Howell, chief interactive officer, Modernista. But bringing interactive into the fold goes somewhat against established agency culture. "Collaboration and sharing are not core competencies at agencies," said Ivan Askwith, ...
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June 13, 2010
June 13, 2010
Many business owners consider choosing a website design company primarily based upon the colors and pictures in the website company's portfolio. That is somewhat understandable considering the subconscious emotional connection that images and colors make.
Problem with this approach: Most of those pictures were provided by someone else, most likely a photographer and/or culled from a stock photo website. Furthermore, pictures don't get one ranked in Google, ...
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February 10, 2010
February 10, 2010
There was an article in the New York Times this week about price setting by brands/manufacturers, and retailers seeking ways to get around this. Overall, brands being allowed to set prices is now often accepted. This is in the Bridge's favor since the Bridge sets prices, and rewards retailers for this by by giving them all the product pictures and prices. It's a win-win.
With that said, the Bridge works best when brands police discounting. Why? We don't want ...
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January 8, 2010
January 8, 2010
The article below from the New York Times is about selling and promoting luxury goods online (such as Prada and Burberry). I suggest browsing the article because it shows how some companies are properly using the the web to make money.
Excerpt:
Selling luxury goods online isn’t the problem — that’s a done deal. Rather, it is that designers and fashion chiefs... can’t seem to grasp the most obvious aspect of the ... Web.
Go to the sites of ...
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December 30, 2009
December 30, 2009
Current way of doing business
Step 1. A brand adds 1,000s of product images, prices, descriptions, dimensions, and other product data to its site.
Step 2. Hundreds of retailers do the exact same thing. They independently add 1,000s of product images, prices, descriptions, and dimensions to their site. The duplication of these actions is expensive.
There are massive inefficiencies in this system. 100’s of retailers are updating ...
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October 24, 2009
October 24, 2009
How E-mail Became a Direct-Marketing Rock Star in Recession
As Search Gets Cut, Retention-Focused Retailers Find Value in Channel's Cost-Effectiveness and Trackability
By Natalie Zmuda
Published: May 11, 2009
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- It's likely the least sexy tool in your marketing arsenal, but it could be the one that delivers real results.
E-mail has emerged as a recession darling, as retailers look to proven programs that ...
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June 26, 2009
June 26, 2009
I received this spam below today. It came to multiple clients' e-mail addresses, from different "marketing directors," including "john" and "jason".
.......................
Hello,
We at Redesign Unit have successfully redesigned websites and enhanced brand appeal. Our exotic and appealing web designs cater to ever changing audience tastes with times. Our clients have benefitted from increased traffic to their websites giving them the much desirous business growth.
...
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May 18, 2009
May 18, 2009
The following article shows how Chrysler is using its website to drive real world sales. Excerpts:
Nearly six months before the launch, a team at Organic started calculating how much Chrysler would need to spend on marketing to sell its target number of vehicles by figuring out how much Web traffic the company needed to generate.
When the ad campaign went live, the system started calculating whether the commercials were generating ...
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September 8, 2008
September 8, 2008
The article below from today's Times explains how fashion designers are using the Web to design new collections. I imagine the same could be said of home goods and tableware designers. When more and more people spend time online instead of in front of a television or reading, how could the Net not be an increasing influence? This same trend extends to pre-shopping habits. When people plan to pay $300 for a tabletop setting, they go online first and ...
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February 15, 2008
February 15, 2008
David Pogue in his New York Times column this week reviews the new Microsoft Office Live Small Business suite. He first notes:
Half the small businesses in America, and 70 percent of one-person businesses, don’t even have Web sites. Obviously, the percentage that exploits Internet marketing tools like e-mail newsletters, search engine ads and online stores is even lower.
The immediately brings to mind all the mom and pop and small tableware companies. For...
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February 11, 2008
February 11, 2008
The Times reports that the price to advertise online will soon rise due to increased demand:
"The cost of ads per 1,000 viewers “bottomed out” in 2007, averaging $3.31, according to the report. This year, it predicted, ad rates will start to rise, reaching $3.86 by 2011."
Full article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/02/technology/02online.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=dan+mitchell&st=nyt&oref=slogin
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January 29, 2008
January 29, 2008
Allison Zisko pens an article in this week's HFN about the absence of the green tableware movement. She says that new manufacturing or distribution techniques are NOT in store. Consumers and the industry as whole can largely look forward to: less packaging and nature-inspired themes. Not too inspiring compared to what other industries are doing. But, let's not kill the messenger.
Her article can be found here:
http://hfnmag.com/index.php?id=91&...
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December 19, 2007
December 19, 2007
One way for retailers to abide by brands and distributor's wishes not to sell below MSRP is to offer free shipping. In this screen shot we see many offers for free shipping. Retailers who use Google AdWords even put the free shipping language in their ad. Smith China, a notorious discounter, even puts "free shipping" in the title tag of their page.
Of course, retailers would respond that they are just trying to be competitive with other online ...
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December 6, 2007
December 6, 2007
The WSJ reports today that your Internet provider may be preparing to sell you out.
Excerpt:
The newer form of behavioral targeting involves placing gear called "deep-packet inspection boxes" inside an Internet provider's network of pipes and wires. Instead of observing only a select number of Web sites, these boxes can track all of the sites a consumer visits, and deliver far more detailed information to potential advertisers.
Let's look at how a ...
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