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  1. News from Us
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+ Bridge in the News - Bridge in the News

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August 22, 2021 Brands Are Cutting Out Stores Thanks to Facebook, Instagram, and Soon Twitter
Brands Are Cutting Out Stores Thanks to Facebook, Instagram, and Soon Twitter
August 22, 2021
I've watched brands use social media to do an end-run around retailers.  A recent article from RetailDive substantiates this. Excerpt:

"75% of social media users said they increased their purchases from brands they follow... A 2021 study from NPD found that 51% of survey respondents said they bought items thanks to content in their Facebook and Instagram feeds."

Translation: 75% of shoppers bought more from brands directly--which is bad for retailers.  The article ...
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August 7, 2021 We're SaaS-y
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We're SaaS-y
August 7, 2021
Historically, a young tech company like ours would go out and get a seed investor, then build up to venture capital (VC) money, do a few rounds of that, and then go public—and then down the road, take some private equity money. In sum, at various points, we’d need to fill our tank with funds from different sources. 

That’s changing.  In today’s market, everyone wants to invest and be a part of the software-as-a-service (SaaS) revolution (our space!). Private ...
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July 30, 2021 Press Release: Bridge Membership Surges 50%
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Press Release: Bridge Membership Surges 50%
July 30, 2021
For Immediate Release

........................................................

MEMBERSHIP SURGES 50% IN E-COMMERCE COMMUNITY
Online Shopping Boom Drives Retail Industry to Team Up On Bridge

NEW YORK, NY, July 30, 2021 – Bridge, an e-commerce community, reported a record increase in membership as the pandemic continued to rattle the retail landscape. In the last 12 months, 275 retail stores joined Bridge, bringing the total membership to more than 826 stores—a 50% increase. ...
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July 8, 2021 New Baobob Ravinstara Embroidered Candles At Glassworks!
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New Baobob Ravinstara Embroidered Candles At Glassworks!
July 8, 2021
Click here to shop for Baobob Ravinstara Candles on this website.

Crocheted by hand by craftswomen in a Malagasy women’s cooperative in Madagascar, this Baobob collection will enchant your interiors with an air of vacation. Natural leaf motifs are embroidered with colored raffia threads, derived from the native Raffia tree. This 6th edition marks a creative turning point with a new technique using a figurative drawing embroidered on raffia. Ravinstara, introduced in Madagascar in the ...
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July 4, 2021 Facebook: Dangerous For Your Kids--and Your Business
Facebook: Dangerous For Your Kids--and Your Business
July 4, 2021
I’m seeing a disturbing trend online. Stores are not sharing news and events on their websites. Instead, they are relying on Facebook (and Instagram, which it also owns) to perform this task. That’s like a customer coming into the physical store and the store manager saying: "Want our news and events? We don’t have it here. Go to the coffee shop next door—which will be filled with our competitors pitching to you." 

I believe this is bad for most ...
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June 17, 2021 NYT: F.T.C. To Take New Route Under Khan
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NYT: F.T.C. To Take New Route Under Khan
June 17, 2021
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/16/technology/lina-khan-big-tech.html View Post
June 17, 2021 WSJ: Shops Join Forces vs. Amazon
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WSJ: Shops Join Forces vs. Amazon
June 17, 2021
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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June 16, 2021 NYT: Biden Names Lina Khan, an Amazon Critic, as F.T.C. Chair
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NYT: Biden Names Lina Khan, an Amazon Critic, as F.T.C. Chair
June 16, 2021
The Times shares that the FTC will have a new leader that is knowledgable about Amazon.

Excerpts:

In her new role, Ms. Khan will lead efforts to regulate the kind of behavior highlighted for years by critics of Amazon, Facebook, Google and Apple. She told a Senate committee in April that she was worried about the way tech companies could use their power to dominate new markets. The agency is investigating Amazon, which Ms. Khan has been highly critical of, and filed an antitrust lawsuit ...
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April 7, 2021 Indie Stores Team Up to Stop Amazon
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Indie Stores Team Up to Stop Amazon
April 7, 2021
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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April 2, 2021 Big Tech Masquerading As Mom-and-Pop Stores
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Big Tech Masquerading As Mom-and-Pop Stores
April 2, 2021
Companies with deep pockets and big connections to Wall St. have teamed up to make the Internet a dirtier place. Legislation is pending to make large sellers of new goods have to reveal the true seller of the good. The goal of the federal bill is to curtail the sale of fake and stolen goods through online marketplaces. This sounds logical. But not to: eBay, Poshmark, Mercari, and Etsy.

These businesses have hundreds of millions of dollars at stake from banks, investors, and rich people. They ...
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March 24, 2021 Remember In-store, Branded Displays? We've Made Them Digital
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Remember In-store, Branded Displays? We've Made Them Digital
March 24, 2021
For decades, brands have paid retailers to set up a display in the retailers' stores. Ralph Lauren's Polo, Nautica, Jimmy Choo, and other leading brands have paid department stores to set up displays and manage their brand appearance. This helps the brand and the stores increase sales.  

As we all know, retail has gone digital. Thirty percent of retail sales are now online. What if there was a way for brands to sponsor displays like these physical ones but do so online?   ...
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March 21, 2021 What Does Amazon Have in Common With Grindr?
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What Does Amazon Have in Common With Grindr?
March 21, 2021
Amazon Prime, Grindr, and Instagram do not seem to have much in common with each other.  But, a recent study by PCloud found that these apps are some of the biggest 'data burglars': they are downloading our data at an alarming rate.

Many brands and retailers in our industry  promote Facebook, yet Facebook and its sister company Instagram are the leading thieves of personal data. It’s akin to them suggesting their friend sit next to a digital pick pocket.

Scott Galloway...
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March 1, 2021 Amazon ONLY Ships Sofas; It Doesn't Use Them
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Amazon ONLY Ships Sofas; It Doesn't Use Them
March 1, 2021
What Percent of Your Store Should Be a Warehouse?

These days, ugly Amazon warehouses are beating up pretty retail stores. Many stores in 2020 had record online sales that made up 40% or more of revenue, but they are struggling because they had to bear the burden of retail stores. Retail stores cost more per square foot to rent, furnish, and maintain. They also cost more to staff. A warehouse person need not be a people person and a snazzy dresser; they can exhibit anger management issues and ...
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February 19, 2021 Facts Are Fuel
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Facts Are Fuel
February 19, 2021
When I was speaking with the team this week, I mentioned author Dan Roam’s strategy for convincing people to change their ways. He suggested leading with data (i.e. facts), which leads to a change in one’s thinking and beliefs, which will then change one’s actions—aka they will change their website to use Bridge.  

Yet, we can’t "lead" with too many facts, because as the authors of the book Rethink point out, that is like ...
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February 5, 2021 How Netflix And Bridge Deliver Value
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How Netflix And Bridge Deliver Value
February 5, 2021
How much does Bridge cost vs other marketing tools? Let's imagine a printed catalog costs $10 to print and send to a customer. The customer uses it for 10 minutes. It therefore costs $1 per minute. 

The Bridge Smart Products service costs a brand $9 per year per retailer.  Over that year, a retailer interacts with that Smart Product data for 104 minutes. This number is approximately 2 minutes per week. (Please note: some retailers view Smart Product data at a much higher rate, such ...
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February 1, 2021 Amazon Wants 'One Channel,' But Businesses Want Multi-Channel
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Amazon Wants 'One Channel,' But Businesses Want Multi-Channel
February 1, 2021
Reports suggest that 50% of purchases start on Amazon.com, and Amazon wants to keep it this way. Yet, businesses and merchants increasingly want to sell their products via their own DTC (direct to consumer) site, retailers' websites, Facebook, Instagram, and more.  Due to this, Shopify, which powers many DTC and retailer websites, is a growing thorn in Amazon's dominance of retail.  Shopify reportedly helps power more than 30% of online U.S. retail sales.

To remove this thorn, ...
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January 25, 2021 Indies Stand Up to Amazon
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Indies Stand Up to Amazon
January 25, 2021
When looking at this gift registry on theknot.com, we can see that the bride registered at three stores:
  • Amazon: market capitalization is $1.652 trillion; spends millions on its website each each month. 
  • Wayfair: market capitalization is $29 billion; spends millions on its website each each month. 
  • Julianne's: not a publicly traded company; an indie store located in Texas that is powered by Bridge and pays us $0 each month. 
The Julianne's link shown...
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January 14, 2021 This Scientist Started Helping Bridge ... In The 1950s
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This Scientist Started Helping Bridge ... In The 1950s
January 14, 2021
Starting in the 1950s, Narinder Kapany helped create fiber optic cables, which now enables me to share this with you—and deliver our Bridge e-commerce platform to the world. Thank you, Narinder. 

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2021/01/07/technology/narinder-s-kapany-dead.amp.html
  View Post
December 14, 2020 Style your bar with the spirits of the season ???????
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Style your bar with the spirits of the season ???????
December 14, 2020
Have the holiest, jolliest Holiday bar of your dreams with sparkling glassware and shimmering gold-tone serving pieces from Beatriz Ball. The Venice all purpose glass is a celebration of traditional glassblowing techniques in a brilliantly clear and artfully detailed goblet—perfect for Christmas cocktails. (Venice champagne flutes also available.) The new SIERRA MODERN Seattle medium round platter and Maia small oval bowl in champagne gold add a touch of class to the bar and are dishwasher...
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November 28, 2020 New Yorker Magazine: How Venture Capitalists May Be Deforming Our Industry
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New Yorker Magazine: How Venture Capitalists May Be Deforming Our Industry
November 28, 2020
In this week's New Yorker magazine, Charles Duhigg explores how venture capitalists may be harming our businesses. The article shares that instead of the best company winning, the charismatic charlatan with the most venture capital backing may be winning. In WeWork's case, the company almost won by reaching its IPO. Yet, even bottomless buckets of money couldn't save the company from the economics of office sharing--and its wildcard CEO Adam Neumann.

We have a few businesses in our retail ...
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Shop Local Helps Indie Merchants in Florida Get Google Sales Leads 🔍
Shop Local Helps Indie Merchants in Florida Get Google Sales Leads 🔍
April 2024

Shop Local Helps Indie Merchants in Tennessee Get Google Sales Leads 🔍
Shop Local Helps Indie Merchants in Tennessee Get Google Sales Leads 🔍
April 2024

Shop Local Helps Indie Merchants in Louisiana Get Google Sales Leads 🔍
Shop Local Helps Indie Merchants in Louisiana Get Google Sales Leads 🔍
April 2024

Shop Local Helps Indie Merchants in Delaware Get Google Sales Leads 🔍
Shop Local Helps Indie Merchants in Delaware Get Google Sales Leads 🔍
April 2024

Shop Local Helps Indie Merchants in Pennsylvania Get Google Sales Leads 🔍
Shop Local Helps Indie Merchants in Pennsylvania Get Google Sales Leads 🔍
March 2024

Shop Local Helps Indie Merchants Get Sales Leads in Mississippi
Shop Local Helps Indie Merchants Get Sales Leads in Mississippi
March 2024

Shop Local Merchants Are 60% of Google Page 1 Results in South Carolina
Shop Local Merchants Are 60% of Google Page 1 Results in South Carolina
March 2024

Shop Local Merchants Are 50% of Google Page 1 Results in Georgia
Shop Local Merchants Are 50% of Google Page 1 Results in Georgia
March 2024

Shop Local Helps Indie Merchants Get More Sales Leads than Big-Box Stores Using Google
Shop Local Helps Indie Merchants Get More Sales Leads than Big-Box Stores Using Google
February 2024

Shop Local Retailers Rank on Page 1 of Google in 60% of States
Shop Local Retailers Rank on Page 1 of Google in 60% of States
February 2024

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