Tiktok’s shopping service is teaming up with ShipBob and Newegg to help it store and ship purchases made via the social platform, shares The Wall St. Journal.
Today’s The Wall St. Journal shares a funny story about the importance of displaying product dimensions in e-commerce.
This article shows the value of a brand. If the teakettle in the article shown had a Le Creuset logo, we’d know it was regular size. Tip: Look for trusted brands when shopping online.
The article doesn’t touch on this, but this dimensions problem also relates to POS systems. There is a trend among retailers to output their ...
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TikTok and Amazon are battling in the retail space. TikTok wants to be a retailer, and Amazon wants to be more of an influencer platform. These two share the same goal: get users to share a product link, recommend the product, and get a cut of the sale, shares The Wall St. Journal.
This article and these companies speak to the power of affiliate marketing. One of Amazon’s long-standing secret growth weapons has been affiliate commissions, and influencers are a well-known ...
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While browsing Crate & Barrel's Noho store, I noticed this nice banner.
I recommend that stores promote their baby (and wedding) registry service. They can put up banners like this, as well as put smaller upright displays on shelves and near the cash register.
Are you promoting your baby and wedding registry services in your shop? If so, please send us pictures. We'd like to see how you're doing it ;)
How restaurants, hotels, and tableware brands are using loyalty programs--and what indie stores can learn from this.
October 11, 2023
Perk-y
I recently read about a new loyalty program and wondered what we could learn from it. The founder of Eater and Resy, Ben Leventhal, has started Blackbird, a loyalty program service designed for indie restaurants, reports The New York Times (Read the article). Using the Blackbird app, a diner receives a perk for eating at a restaurant. The retailer sets tiers for which the user qualifies for the perk. For example, a restaurant, Nat’s on Bank in New York City, gives tier 1 customers ...
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A brand displays this Shop Local table tent by its products in a showroom. This table tent helps retailers know that a brand's product are easy to sell online.
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Amazon and third-party delivery services have setup a “warehouse” outside the Astor Place USPS office. This is not a truck parking for five minutes. This a day-long, everyday occurrence. I’ve seen this same scene on a daily basis all around the city for the last three years.
This hurts local retailers. While the local businesses pay extra taxes to operate a store in southern Manhattan, it costs Amazon much less to park a delivery truck (permanently?), put ...
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Brands and sales reps display the Shop Local decal in their showroom windows in Atlanta and Dallas. The decal lets authorized retailers know they can display their products online quickly.
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I see this situation all over the city. Amazon shipping companies are “warehousing” our public space. They put up cones and are permanently setup and conducting business. They use public space for private commercial use.
They’re like a pop-up store in a public parking spot. But unlike a physical store that is in a private building and pays commercial storefront taxes, these trucks don’t pay those retailer taxes. (Each year businesses in lower ...
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How online calendars can help retailers manage and save time.
October 4, 2023
One of the main problems that businesses have is efficient use of time. A retailer (or brand or sales rep) seeks on a daily basis to manage their time and optimize results. (I was reminded of this while reading a The Wall St. Journal article about time management for the family.) Businesses use a variety of tools to manage and save time, including email, texting, and Zoom.
Shop Local helps businesses in their quest to save time. We offer businesses a variety of services to help ...
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Marion Samuel, who manages Babcock Gifts, a Tennessee-based gift shop, pens Tableware Today’s Last Word column in this month’s issue. She shares how they have grown over the last 50 years and run their store.
I was pleased to see her tout the store’s Bridge software. Babcock Gifts, which has been a client for 10 years, uses Bridge’s Shop Local gift registry service and Brand Syncing service. Using our service, they showcase 400+ couples’ gift registries online ...
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Brands may consider using Shopify for their online operations. It’s important to note that brands can’t do many things with Shopify. A key Shopify problem for a brand is that the brand has to have separate “stores” for retail and wholesale customers. The reason is that Shopify doesn’t know what to charge the customer because it doesn’t know if it’s a general public shopper (that pays retail) or a retailer (that pays the wholesale price). &...
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What universal standards can teach us about simplicity regarding e-commerce platforms.
September 25, 2023
When Apple launched its new iPhones this month, one of its most noteworthy updates was replacing its Lightning charging cable with a USB-C. This was not a voluntary move or extension of Steve Jobs’s love of simplicity. Apple changed it because the European Union required them to, according to Ben Cohen in The Wall St. Journal. Now, just about every mobile phone in the world (forget just little ol’ Europe) will have one charging solution (USB-C).