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Dollars & Sense News Posts

Industry Insights, Marketing Trends, and Kvetching by Jason Solarek

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  1. News from Us
  2. News from Members
  3. Events
  4. Press
  5. Dollars & Sense
  6. Profile Stories
  7. Updates
  8. Training Calendar
  9. Training Videos
  10. Jobs
+ Bridge in the News - Bridge in the News

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July 18, 2023 To Kill a Mockingbird
How a company's sales and growth can be affected by the message it conveys to customers.
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To Kill a Mockingbird
How a company's sales and growth can be affected by the message it conveys to customers.
July 18, 2023
Allbirds stock is down 95% since its November 2021 initial public offering. People may say the company launched the wrong products (did you buy one of their puffer jackets?) or tried to grow too quickly.  I believe there is a larger reason: you can’t scale a company by leading with an environmental message—which is Allbirds’s pitch. Consumers rank saving the planet as one of their least pressing concerns when making a purchase. The leading factors consumers look for when ...
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June 30, 2023 Dr. Fill 👨🏻‍⚕️
How pre-populating information saves clients time and speeds them along a process.
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Dr. Fill 👨🏻‍⚕️
How pre-populating information saves clients time and speeds them along a process.
June 30, 2023
Each April, I scramble to send my tax information to my accountant so I can file my taxes before April 15. Since my friends confide that they do the same, there are likely millions of people like us racing to prepare our taxes. What if there was a way to avoid this painful rush—and even the cost of it? The WSJ shares that Japan, New Zealand, and much of Europe get such relief. The countries prepare tax returns for their citizens using existing data, and the citizen just needs to review it,...
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June 30, 2023 Mission: Statements 🧨
What we can learn about a company through its mission statement.
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Mission: Statements 🧨
What we can learn about a company through its mission statement.
June 30, 2023
This past week, I read a mission statement from The Knot's corporate website (https://www.theknotww.com/). The statement included a paragraph and five principles. The paragraph describes what the parent company does. The statement says:

"We help couples around the world navigate and enjoy life’s biggest moments together. As a global company, our industry-leading websites, top-ranked mobile apps, and trusted resources provide the most sought-after information, connections, and ...
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June 8, 2023 Give Me a Goodbye Kiss 💋
How businesses keep customers coming back after they make a purchase.
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Give Me a Goodbye Kiss 💋
How businesses keep customers coming back after they make a purchase.
June 8, 2023
Six Flags is updating its theme parks to encourage families to spend more time there and visit more often, according to this past weekend’s The Wall St. Journal. The theme park's president, Jeffrey Siebert, says that the nightly fireworks show is what the industry calls a “kiss good night.” After park-goers have spent the day spending, they perceive the show as a free, post-purchase gift with no strings attached.  The fireworks thereby help the customer leave fulfilled and...
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June 2, 2023 Acquisition
How we can acquire new prospects by leveraging our existing network of customers.
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Acquisition
How we can acquire new prospects by leveraging our existing network of customers.
June 2, 2023
In Andrew Chen’s book The Cold Start Problem, he breaks the network effect into three parts: engagement, acquisition, and economize. At Shop Local, we rely on the network effect and its three parts. I feel that we’re succeeding in terms of engagement but need improvement in acquisition. 

Engagement
We use the 64,000 products in our Syncing service to engage 1,200 our retail clients. We email them new intros, price updates, archived items for these synced products. Once they ...
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May 26, 2023 Data, Filters, and Search Walk Into a Soundbar
How big data, filters, and search engines can help us create a better experience for our members.
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Data, Filters, and Search Walk Into a Soundbar
How big data, filters, and search engines can help us create a better experience for our members.
May 26, 2023
Apple announced last month that it's launching a new classical music app. What’s novel about the Apple Music Classical app is how it lets music fans more easily search thousands of variations of the same song. For example, let’s say you want to find a Johann Sebastian Bach song. Over the past 300 years, many musicians have done ‘covers’ of his works, and there are variations by conductor, music, year, etc., thereby producing thousands of variations. Existing software ...
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May 15, 2023 We Got Sole 🩴
What Crocs can teach us about gaining new customers and keeping them happy.
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We Got Sole 🩴
What Crocs can teach us about gaining new customers and keeping them happy.
May 15, 2023
About 15 years ago, I bought a pair of Crocs sandals in Myrtle Beach, SC. Not only were they hot pink, but the insole was traffic cone orange. My buddies hated them, but oddly others loved them. The sandals were affordable (maybe $20), comfortable, and a conversation starter.

According to last week’s The New York Times' profile on Crocs, I’m one of tens of millions of happy Crocs owners. This happiness is profitable:
  • Crocs’ sales have almost doubled since 2019.
...
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May 9, 2023 Salsa-fy 🌮: The Time is Ripe for Efficiency
How allocating our resources efficiently can help us save time, save money, and deliver value to our customers.
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Salsa-fy 🌮: The Time is Ripe for Efficiency
How allocating our resources efficiently can help us save time, save money, and deliver value to our customers.
May 9, 2023
You've heard of Salsa-fy? It’s national, was started in Dallas, is used by 60,000 employees, and is used at more than 1,600 corporate locations. Salsa-fy helps businesses steer clear of trouble, offer the best value, and ensures profitability. You may interrupt me here and ask, “Jason, don’t you mean the software company Salesify?” No, I’m talking about the restaurant chain Chili’s and its approach to managing salsa, french fries, and its business.  ...
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March 2, 2023 Honoring Our Peers
How we can honor those that came before us in the retail industry.
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Honoring Our Peers
How we can honor those that came before us in the retail industry.
March 2, 2023
The founder of Juan Pollo Chicken, Albert Okura, passed away last week at the age of 71. Mr. Okura envisioned Juan Pollo, a fast food chain with 25 locations in Southern California, as a household name that would someday sell the most chicken in the world. He believed in this so much that he bought the site of the original McDonald’s restaurant, located in San Bernardino, CA, in 1998—not to turn it into a Juan Pollo restaurant but rather into a museum to honor his fast food industry....
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February 23, 2023 Save the Date 🗓️
How we can celebrate indie stores and promote sales by hosting a Save Local event.
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Save the Date 🗓️
How we can celebrate indie stores and promote sales by hosting a Save Local event.
February 23, 2023
When one thinks of shopping locally, some consider it an act of charity. One may pay more and get less selection. That’s not a recipe for success. In contrast, the world’s most successful retailers, Walmart and Amazon, operate on just the opposite principles: low prices and massive selection. When I’m in Walmart's Panama City Beach location, it’s so massive I feel like I’m in the Giants' stadium. Amazon sells 12m items on its website (350m if you count the third-...
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February 4, 2023 Legos & Business Strategy
How we can bring clients together to build a larger network.
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Legos & Business Strategy
How we can bring clients together to build a larger network.
February 4, 2023
Economist Bent Flyvbjerg encourages us to find our “Lego” in his new book “How Big Things Get Done.”  Mr. Flyvbjerg, whose new book is reviewed by Ben Cohen in this week’s The Wall Street Journal, says that most large projects that are completed successfully use a modular approach. Excerpt from The Wall Street Journal:

“That’s the question every project leader should ask: What is the small thing we can assemble in large numbers into a big ...
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January 31, 2023 New Member Targets 🎯
How setting goals for our new members can help them be more successful.
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New Member Targets 🎯
How setting goals for our new members can help them be more successful.
January 31, 2023
When growing our network, we consider what it takes to keep existing members and grow into other industries. Andrew Chen in The Cold Start Problem reports that Facebook famously wanted a user to get 10 friends in a week because then the person would likely use the service. Similarly, Slack said users with about 10 connections tend to become active users. My company currently doesn’t have such new user benchmarks and we need to develop them. 

Adding New Retail Members to the Product...
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January 31, 2023 Networks: Let's Tango 💃🏽🕺🏼
How integrating a messaging service into our e-commerce platform can help us acquire new customers.
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Networks: Let's Tango 💃🏽🕺🏼
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 ...
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January 27, 2023 Do You Agree Defaults Are Important? ✅ Yes ___ No
How having the right defaults makes decisions easier for clients and helps them be more successful.
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Do You Agree Defaults Are Important? ✅ Yes ___ No
How having the right defaults makes decisions easier for clients and helps them be more successful.
January 27, 2023
When you look at your driver’s license, it lists if you’re an organ donor. Twenty years ago, only 20% of people were donors, but today 80% are—thereby saving millions of lives. Did people become more kind? No, the question on the application was changed from opt-in to opt-out. People signing up for or renewing a license are now by default enlisted in organ donation. Lesson: the right default answer in medical care can save millions of lives. Similarly, the right defaults ...
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December 28, 2022 Referrals: Johnny Softwareseed 👨‍🌾 🍎
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Referrals: Johnny Softwareseed 👨‍🌾 🍎
December 28, 2022
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 ...
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December 15, 2022 Next Generation ⏩️
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Next Generation ⏩️
December 15, 2022
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. 

If...
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December 8, 2022 What's on The Menu? Giving Back
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What's on The Menu? Giving Back
December 8, 2022
While drinking Athletic, a non-alcoholic (fake!) beer, I noticed that its box proclaims that it gives back 2% to local trails. I love walking trails, and I thought: the next time I venture to have a sober night, I’ll pick up another box of Athletic. (Thanks, Athletic, for giving out $2.5m in trail grants.) Warby Parker gives a pair of eyeglasses for each pair bought (they've given 10m pairs!), while Bombas does this for socks. Bookshop.org gives a percent back to small ...
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December 1, 2022 The Price is Right 🛒
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The Price is Right 🛒
December 1, 2022
When we talk about prices, there are two prices that are important: 
  • The price that we charge clients.
  • The price our clients charge their customers. 

We normally talk about the former, aka how our prices compare with other competitors, like Shopify or wholesale services like Faire. 

Of increasing importance to us is what our retailers charge their customers.  Walmart recently announced that it was taking brands to account and pressuring them to keep ...
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November 21, 2022 Reaganomics: Show Me the Money 📝
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Reaganomics: Show Me the Money 📝
November 21, 2022
Ronald Reagan said, “If you’re explaining, you’re losing.”  Reaganomics usually refers to tax cuts and trickle down economics, yet I propose that we take the Gipper’s quote and ask: How can simplicity contribute to a business's success?

When we share what leading companies do, we can often skip an explanation and sum it up in a brief sentence. Examples:
  • Walmart offers low prices.
  • Facebook connects us.
  • Hyatt offers a place to sleep.
  • Amazon offers
...
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November 9, 2022 Don't Laugh: Fun Is a Good Marketing Vehicle 🤹‍♂️
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Don't Laugh: Fun Is a Good Marketing Vehicle 🤹‍♂️
November 9, 2022
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, ...
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Press: Shop Local & Bridge in the News
Shop Local Helps Indie Stores Rank on Page 1 of Google in 62% of States
Shop Local Helps Indie Stores Rank on Page 1 of Google in 62% of States
December 2024

Tableware Today Column: Saying I Do To Registries
Tableware Today Column: Saying I Do To Registries
November 2024

Tableware Today: New Leaderboard Column from Shop Local
Tableware Today: New Leaderboard Column from Shop Local
August 2024

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

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