How to connect with or invite the sales reps assigned to your brands to sell more and quickly access their contact information.
March 20, 2023
Your Online Store has an updated feature: you can now more easily connect with your sales reps.
On a brand's home page, you can invite your sales rep to join you on the Shop Local platform. Your store can also edit or remove a sales rep assigned to a brand.
Connecting with your sales reps helps your store contact the right rep more quickly, sell more products, and work more efficiently.
Bridge analyzed the websites for the top-40 selling brands in the tabletop and giftware industry. We assessed what promotions and discounts, such free shipping, brands offer. Bridge did this because a product's price, which is impacted by discounts, is often the leading factor when shopping online. More than 67% of the brands surveyed by Bridge offer free shipping.
How to encourage registry customers to purchase from a registry by sharing previous gift givers' names
February 16, 2023
Your Bridge Store has an updated feature to encourage customers to complete a registry purchase. Your Bridge Store displays gift givers' names on a registry's list.
Previously, the gift givers' names were only displayed by rolling over "Purchases" at the top of a registry list.
Now, the gift givers are also displayed in a box at the footer of a registry's list.
In the example shown, we see a registry list at The Ivy House, a fine china store in Dallas. At the ...
Read More
How integrating a messaging service into our e-commerce platform can help us acquire new customers.
January 31, 2023
It takes a lot of people to build a bridge, but just two to tango. This applies to the analog world as well as the digital one. In the digital space, I'm using tango to refer to messaging between two people. I believe messaging is a service we can add to our offering to diversify how our company Shop Local grows.
Different Networks Require a Different Number of Users in a Group
Andrew Chen in The Cold Start Problem states that a key difference among network models is the required minimum ...
Read More
How to view key wholesale information for your brands to save time and avoid errors when processing orders.
January 4, 2023
Your Bridge has a new feature: We've made it easier to access wholesale information for the products on your Bridge Store. Viewing an order's Details page displays wholesale information for products purchased by your customers.
Previously, when your store viewed a retail order's Details page the information displayed was limited to just details about the product’s brand.
With this update, the Order Details page includes:
In the book The Cold Start Problem, Andrew Chen says that the 'network effect’ is really three effects:
The acquisition effect
The engagement effect
The monetization effect
In the beginning, a business seeking to build a network has to concentrate on acquiring users, even if they are non-paying. Companies often give away the service, especially software companies, and we can see that with Facebook, Slack, TikTok, and many others. Bridge didn’t do ...
Read More
More than 65% of brands surveyed by Bridge offer free shipping, while just 14% of indie stores do. Brands often charge just $118 to quality for free shipping, while stores charge $190 (a $72 difference). Where would you shop?
Bridge analyzed the websites for the top-40 selling brands in the tabletop and giftware industry. We assessed what promotions and discounts, such free shipping, brands offer. Bridge did this because a product's price, which is impacted by discounts, is often the leading ...
Read More
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.
Great news: I have created a special training video for retailers for the holiday season. In this video, I share five easy steps to help you improve your home page--and holiday sales.
Celebrating the bounty of friends and abundant fare at harvest time, we’ve invited four new guests to our Autumn Thanksgiving table! Part of Juliska's cherished Forest Walk collection, a stately stag, regal pheasant, thoughtful fox, and charming squirrel are featured in the corners. The beautifully woven linen napkin is bordered with a painterly Fall motif. Stop at the Shadyside store to see them. Glassworks can help you with all of your Thanksgiving entertaining needs!
Bridge has something that every store needs, but doesn’t really want: product data. We get stores to trust us that they need our product data for 64,000 products from 109 brands. They really don’t want the data—they want the sales from it. The data itself is worthless, but the sales from it are invaluable. Do you know who also has this issue? Funeral directors. Last week's Wall Street Journal shares that mortuaries are leveraging bonsai trees, setting up bouncy castles, ...
Read More
Every table is the story of an encounter. Sambonet invites you to look through the abstract foliage of its new Jungle cutlery. An interweaving of natural elements, a decorative motif that redesigns cutlery by 'dressing' it with contemporary style. Just by placing the fork, spoon and knife close together, the asymmetrical graphism conceived by the fashion designer Gianni Cinti is composed. Signs of an organic and unique storytelling.
View Post
Your Bridge now makes it easier for you to connect with and sell your brands’ products. We have added a new page to invite brands to sync products. This page significantly reduces the number of steps that your store takes to invite a brand.
There is no charge for a member to send sync invites or sync products with a brand. Product Syncing is free for retailers, sales reps, trade marts, and interior designers. Participating brands pay for the service.
 ...
Read More
Utterly simple design and completely gorgeous. The Beatriz Ball SOHO Rectangular Medium Brooklyn Platter is notable for its simple rectangular shape and shimmering hand-polished surface.
Great on the table, bar or kitchen island, it absolutely invites sharing. Handmade by skilled artisans, this is a multi-purpose tray you'll appreciate as much for its supreme functionality as for its artistic originality. Several Brooklyn styles to choose from. Makes an awesome gift!
Nice to see industry friend David Zrike in the new issue of Tableware Today. In David’s article, he reminds us of the magic that happens at shows and welcomes us to join him and industry colleagues at the October Tabletop Show.
In the issue, there is also a nice advertisement for the Tabletop Association, which David leads. Of the 48 brands displayed in the ad, Bridge has partnerships with 17 (35%). Products from these 17 brands, which total more than 24,000 products, can be...
Read More
Bridge has updated your Bridge Shop's domain address. Your site's URL now includes "myshoplocal.com." If you look at the top of your account, you will see this domain in the web browser's URL field. Specifically, we changed the URL from [YourBusinessName].bridgecatalog.com to [YourBusinessName].myshoplocal.com.
Entertain in this handwoven neutral hue for a perfectly stylish presentation at your dinner table to impress family and guests. This natural vine composition invites rustic charm in any table setting and brings joy to biting a piece of warm bread. Available in 2 sizes.
CALAISIO
natural elegance, extraordinary durability
View Post
When I was a kid, my mom instilled in me a lesson to always get paid for my work. When I went to mow a lawn or do my newspaper route, she’d remind me, “Be sure you get paid.” As an adult, these flashbacks are vivid like a scene from Citizen Kane—just swap out the Rosebud sled with my newspaper delivery bike. Today, this lesson still resonates when running Bridge. When calling a store that hasn’t paid its Bridge bill, I’m confident in asking ...
Read More
We've added a new feature to your Bridge account: you can now more easily find sales reps that are part of an agency. Sales rep agencies can now more easily present their team via Bridge.
Previously, each sales rep had their own Bridge account. For example, if an agency had 10 sales reps, there would be 10 separate Bridge accounts. We have updated the software so that the 10 reps now share one agency Bridge account.
This approach makes it easier for retailers and other ...
Read More