The WSJ shares how famous brand names like Radio Shack and Linens n’ Things were caught up in a scandal:

https://www.wsj.com/business/retail/tai-lopez-radioshack-pier1-investors-sec-66352aab?st=9uwmMH

Gift from a Local Shop:

• Arrives in one piece.
• Gift wrapped.
• Easy exchanges.

Gift from an Online-only Seller

• Arrives dirty & crumpled.
• Not gift wrapped.
• Difficult exchanges.

Christofle’s Mood flatware is mentioned as a status item in this weekend’s WSJ. 

Christofle, a Shop Local partner, helps its indie stores sell its prestigious items via our Product Syncing service. 

https://www.wsj.com/business/retail/saks-is-shutting-down-its-luxury-partnership-with-amazon-a95e30cc?st=PFGrsS

A growing company or organization has a story to share. I asked our team create a tagline that sums up our story, and then make a visual for that tagline using an AI tool. 

I am so impressed by our team's submissions. Thank you, Moshe, Josh, Mark, Wes, Danish, Abby, Jordyn, and Aimee!

Vinted, an online retail marketplace for secondhand clothes, reports saving the planet 679 kilotons of CO2 emissions in 2023.  

Quantifying benefits like this can leave a meaningful impression. We do it here at Shop Local, too. 

• Our platform helps indie stores avoid $3.6m a year in labor costs. 
• This equates to saving them 60 employees and 144,000 hours of work. 

These are resources the indie merchants can instead spend on supporting their stores. 

Thanks to Jamie at Bodrum for displaying their Shop Local flyer at the Las Vegas Mart. Their flyer helps retailers know they can easily sell their products online and avoid labor costs.  

Learn more about friends at Bodrum: 

https://bodrum.myshoplocal.com

P.S. ~ Thanks to Matt Hullfish for the fun pic of the shop local messaging at the show. 

Brands are increasingly hiring “storytellers,” shares the Wall St. Journal. These storytellers are using social media, podcasts, and other novel marketing approaches to share a business’s story. Ironically, earned media, such as the WSJ newspaper (where I read about this trend), is not seen as a leading medium. Print newspaper subscriptions have fallen by 70% since 2005. (I'm a lone holdout: I still get the Times and WSJ each week; I used to get four print papers each day. My poor newspaper

https://www.wsj.com/business/retail/amazon-orland-park-illinois-opening-13362c97?st=DYZBKJ

Brands display a Shop Local flyer in their showrooms to help their retailers sell more. When a retailer joins the brand on Shop Local, a store on average receives many benefits, including:

• Avoiding $36,000/year in labor costs.
• Avoiding losing 8% on a price changes.
• Selling 18% more.
• Gaining $72,000 in wedding registry sales. 

Today’s Wall St Journal has two articles that help explain the changing retail landscape. People used to go to stores for inspiration and direction on what to buy—but now use Instagram, TikTok, and other digital media. Once they get inspired online, they can buy online, often from the brand with a 10% off coupon and free shipping. 

To capsize a ship, you don’t need a tsunami to hit it—just poke holes in it and over time it will sink.  This ship is traditional retail.  

Our job is to

Thanks to SMEG, Jonathan Pearson, Kitchen 2 Table for this showcase highlighting products celebrating America. SMEG and K2T gave away a SMEG refrigerator worth $4,000+ to a lucky merchant that wrote an order in the showroom. 

SMEG is a Shop Local partner that helps its indie stores more easily sell its items. 

Thank you, friends, for a wonderful show. 

Excerpt:

“… Amazon’s automation team expects the company can avoid hiring more than 160,000 people in the United States it would otherwise need by 2027. …

Executives told Amazon’s board last year that they hoped robotic automation would allow the company to continue to avoid adding to its U.S. work force in the coming years, even though they expect to sell twice as many products by 2033. That would translate to more than 600,000 people whom Amazon didn’t need to hire.”

Full article: 

https://

Read the full articles: 

https://businessofhome.com/articles/food52-files-for-bankruptcy-and-courts-a-sale

https://nypost.com/2025/12/31/business/buzzy-nyc-based-food52-goes-belly-up-rival-makes-bid-to-buy-it/

Read the full story: 

https://www.wsj.com/business/saks-stylist-scam-shail-kwatra-81cc3aba?st=GGCwVo

Read the full story:

https://www.wsj.com/style/fashion/norms-hemorrhoid-cream-3666a4e8?st=5Hsiry

The Times offered a creative visual for its review of the new book Capitalism.  Since we help retailers and brands, barcodes are omnipresent for us and this barcode visual caught our eye.  (We even used a barcode in one interpretation of our logo.)  

Read the full WSJ article:

https://www.wsj.com/business/retail/fao-schwarz-personal-shopper-6801c453