We’ll be there Wednesday, June 18 -  Friday, June 20, 2025

We'd love to meet and hear about your sales goals for 2025.

Are you a brand or sales rep that uses Shop Local?
If so, we put together the following materials for you to share with your retailers. Please print these for use during the show:

1. Explanation Materials

1. A flyer explaining the benefits of the Shop Local service: View explanation PDF here
2. Flyer explaining the service for use in showroom:  https://bridge.myshoplocal.com/

We’ll be at the AmericasMart Tuesday, July 15 - Friday, July 18, 2025. 

We'd love to meet and hear about your sales goals.

Are you a brand or sales rep that uses Shop Local?
If so, we put together the following materials for you to share with your retailers. Please print these for use during the show:

1. Explanation Materials

1. A flyer explaining the benefits of the Shop Local service: View explanation PDF here
2. Flyer explaining the service for use in showroom:  https://bridge.myshoplocal.

Happy to see our partner celebrated in The New York Times:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/14/dining/le-creuset.html?unlocked_article_code=1._04.2q-B.PbirAQQz4LcN&smid=url-share

To improve your wedding registry sales, first collect this information on your 2025 registries: 

• Average number of registries with couples’ pictures.
• Average number of items added per registry.
• Average number of registrants’ official wedding sites with links back to their registry list on your site.
• Average number of registry lists with a gift card option.   

Goals:

• All registries have couples’ pictures.
• Increase number of items added per registry.
• Increase number of registrants’ official

A recent The Wall St. Journal article shared some notable insights about Wayfair promotions. These facts should inspire more indie stores to run sales. 

Article excerpts:

• "Wayfair, which doesn’t tend to hold inventory, has suppliers cover nearly all of the costs tied to a promotion."
• "...of revenue generated during promotions, around 70% comes from non-promoted items."
• "Only about 30% of revenue during a promotion comes from items that are marked down, which Gulliver said “gives us some

As I approach my 50th birthday, time is on my mind. 

One of our platform’s major benefits is helping clients avoid wasting time. For example, a retailer that uses our service on average avoids $36,000 on Labor costs each year.  

My job is to convey these time savings whenever I can. We want to quantify time savings, such as by showing weeks or months saved on labor. (Reference: my napkin calendar sketch.) i have to let retailers, brands, and reps know we can stop the bleeding of time

While this may be the last issue of Tableware Today, it’s surely not the last of what the magazine has given us. What surrounds me and you has been touched and improved by Amy and Tableware Today in small and big ways. Over the last 19 years, thanks to Tableware Today, I’ve gained friends, grown my business, and enriched my life. In 2006, I was fresh into the tableware website scene and it was hot. I’m not talking limo rides, after-hours parties, and bottle service; I’m talking HTML, ColdFusion,

In this example, we imagine 100 potential customers start on an online store's home page and wish to give a wedding gift online. On the store not using our software, 10 out of 100 customers will complete a gift-giving checkout. On the store using our software, 40 out of 100 customers will complete a gift-giving checkout—a 4x gain.

Details:

Indie Store Does Not Use Shop Local Gift Registry Service...

• 100 customers start on the retailer's home page —>
• 85 customers make it to the registrant's

P.S. ~ Thanks to our friend Ted for sharing this pic with us 

In a recent Tableware Today article, I implored retailers to 'build their robot.' I encouraged them to invest in technology to automate their processes. I told them how larger retailers like Amazon and Walmart are spending heavily on technology, and that is the best spot to get long-term ROI. Yet, there is another area that indie stores can target to boost profit, and it requires less time and money than spending on technology. 
 

Low Prices > Pretty Website

We've recently discovered

We're happy to see Casa Alegre, Orrefors , Vista Alegre and promote the Shop Local platform in Tableware Today's April/May 2025 issue.

• A brand displays our ShopLocal.org logo so that retailers reading the magazine know they can easily sell the products shown.
• When a brand offers our Syncing service, a retailer can instantly display the brand's entire product catalog online.
• The retailer's customers can buy the products and add them to gift registries.
• The retailer doesn't need to add the

Each month, our Leaderboard reports the best performers from among 1,500 indie stores, 3,000 brands, and 300,000 products with no man hours. Leaderboard results are automatically tallied and published on the first of each month; it’s as if I have an omnipotent robot that does this work for me. Automation like this is crucial to running a successful business. 

Amazon, Walmart, and other retail giants spend massively on automation because this will decide the winners. In 2025, retailers will

While at lunch, I sketched out a comparison between an indie store that doesn’t use Shop Local’s wedding registry software vs. an indie store that does. I show why a retailer using our software likely receives 400% more orders. Conversely, I believe a store not using our software is selling just 25% of what it could be. 

The reason our software produces more orders is that it retains more customers along the sales funnel—from finding the registrant’s gift list, to encouraging one to add a

Indie Store Does Not Use Shop Local Gift Registry Service...

• 500 products offered online —>
• 5 products added by bride/registrant to their wedding registry list —>
• 🎁 1 order —>  
• 😞 Unhappy brides, store owners, brands, and sales reps
   

Indie Store Uses Shop Local Gift Registry Service...

• 5,000 products offered online —>
• 50 products added by bride/registrant to their wedding registry list —>
• 🎁🎁🎁🎁🎁🎁🎁🎁🎁🎁 10 orders —>
• 😄 Happy brides, store owners, brands, and sales

Promote registry service --> Get more registries --> Promote registry service

I often visualize a business process or problem, and then sketch it. We'll then convert the sketch into a graphic that we'll post online.  

This process has helped us explain and share many concepts to our members.

Due to the flurry of activity around AI, The Wall St. Journal recently shared what America experienced as new technology launched over the decades. What’s notable about the 1950 electronic typewriter’s benefits (and most of the stories here) is how similar it is to today’s tech. The machine promises the need for fewer people, greater ease, and speedier results.  It’s essentially what our software offers today but 75 years later. Whether in 1950 or 2025, the value proposition is similar—it’s

The Wall St. Journal reports on Walmart's progress against Amazon.  

Article highlights:

• Walmart delivered 2.5b items on the same day in 2023.
• Walmart delivered 5b items on the same day in 2024.
• E-commerce generates 18% of Walmart's revenue but is not profitable. (This is much like Amazon, which didn’t report a profit for the first 10 years. Walmart is running its online business at a loss.)
• Walmart relies on its own driver fleet named Spark, which it started in 2018, to deliver goods. (The

We’re seeing all major wedding registry merchants, such as Amazon and Zola, offer a post-registry completion discount. We tracked 11 major retailers and found their discounts ranged from 10% to 20%—with the largest, most successful players offering the highest (20%).
 

Post-Registry Discount/Retailer:

• 20% Amazon
• 20% Bloomingdale's
• 20% Zola
• 15% Anthropologie
• 15% Crate & Barrel
• 15% CB2
• 15% Target
• 10-20% Macy's
• 10% Pottery Barn
• 10% West Elm
• 10% Williams Sonoma

Results recorded February 24, 2025. Results