Featured News See You in Dallas in June 2024
Wednesday, June 19, 2024 - Friday, June 21, 2024
Location: Dallas Market Center
We'll be at the Dallas show Wednesday, June 19 – Friday, July 21, 2024. We'd love to meet with you and hear about your business.
Are you a brand or sales rep that uses Shop Local?
If so, we put together the following materials for sales reps and brands. Please share these materials with your retailers. Please print these for use during the show:
A flyer showing featured Brand Syncing partners. We have 114 partner brands. You'll likely see your brand on this sheet.&
Since we support brick-and-mortar retailers, we found Nike’s u-turn regarding retailers to be welcome. They initially planned to cut off 30% of stores but have since returned to them.
In October of 2001, I walked into William-Wayne & Co. in New York City with no appointment. I asked for the owner, was introduced to the co-owner, and suggested he build a website. The two owners, William and Wayne, agreed to discuss it further with me and we scheduled a meeting. Nine months later, William-wayne.com was born.
We’ve updated the website since then, but the fundamentals have stayed the same.
It all started with William & Wayne &...
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Starting the day with a business book helps the mind awaken and perform during the day.
April 21, 2024
I start each workday looking at notes I took when I read $100m Offers by Alex Hormozi. I read the notes, then assess how I can put them into action on our platform. I may add additional notes on top of the existing notes. I may grab a cafe napkin and doodle a feature on it.
These notes have directly benefited our platform: We have used them to launch new features, more clearly explain our services, and overall ensure we're performing our duties for clients.
When we compared our registry service to other registry software, we found 17 unique ways that our registry service helps gift givers, registrants, & merchants. Many other registry services don’t offer these 17 features below.
6 Ways Our Service Helps Gift Givers in Ways That Other Services Do Not
Gift Giver’s Experience (E.g. Friend or family member giving a gift)
The gift giver can easily find the registrant’s gift list because the service helps merchants rank
How Shop Local helps 4 retailers rank on page 1 of Google in Tennessee
April 18, 2024
Indie stores have the best chance of ranking highly in Google when they use Shop Local. Merchants know this because of their page 1 rankings and how they beat big-box stores in search tests, such as for Tennessee results.
These Shop Local retailers located in Tennessee appear on page one of Google due to their Shop Local Store:
Carol Schroeder recently shared how local shops help our communities and their environment. I liked the excerpt below from her post:
”Returns are one example of something local shopkeepers do better than Amazon and other giant web retailers. The e-commerce return rate is estimated to be two to three times that of brick & mortar stores – averaging a shocking 20%-30%. According to The Guardian, a returns platform “recently calculated that only 50% of ...
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How a drawing on a bar napkin led to a software platform that processes trillions of calculations
April 15, 2024
In 2007, while sitting at the pub Moran’s with a beer, I drew a sketch on a napkin that would change our business. I drew a software model that would allow an indie store to instantly show (and sell) thousands of products online—without any labor. (The secret sauce: The respective brand would do the product update work for the merchants.) The immediate goal was to help my two retailers more efficiently load products onto their websites (and save me the boredom of doing it).
The Wall St. Journal shares how Amazon takes other companies’ ideas on a mass scale, such as from Trader Joe’s. The article is an excerpt from “The Everything War: Amazon’s Ruthless Quest to Own the World and Remake Corporate Power,” a new book by Dana Mattioli.
How Taco Ball is going digital first--and others would be wise to follow
April 13, 2024
Fast food is stuffing itself with software. Yum Brands, which owns Taco Bell and Pizza Hut, is embracing a few strategies we’ve chatted about, including software bundles and membership programs. It’s even investing in AI. Its budget: $21m last year. That’s a lot of lettuce.
Does the market merit it? Well, 45% of Yum’s sales are digital. Likewise, we’re hearing website sales make up about half of our merchants' sales. Note: We’re not half of every ...
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How Shop Local helps 3 retailers rank on page 1 of Google in Louisiana
April 11, 2024
Indie stores have the best chance of ranking highly in Google when they use Shop Local. Merchants know this because of their page 1 rankings and how they beat big-box stores in search tests, such as for Louisiana results.
These Shop Local retailers located in Louisiana appear on page one of Google due to their Shop Local Store:
How retailers can quickly view all files shared by a brand
April 10, 2024
Your Shop Local Store has a new feature: You can now view all files shared by a brand on one page. The new "Files" link on a brand's Home (Collections) page leads to all of the brand's files in the File Sharing Library.
In the example shown, we see a retailer Synced with William Yeoward.
On William Yeoward's Home page, the retailer can see a "Files" link.
When the retailer clicks the "Files" link, they are taken to the files shared by William
Sixty percent of Macy’s value lies not in its stores, brands, or IP, but in the dirt below it: its real estate. That’s not a good bellwether for its existence as is.
How an invitation from Syncing brand Mackenzie-Childs helped this retailer set up an online store in only one day
April 8, 2024
We are pleased to announce that FairyTales in Lombard, Illinois, has joined Shop Local to grow their online business. FairyTales is a family-owned store that offers home décor, unique gifts, collectibles, apparel, and more.
FairyTales saved $2,740 and 4 weeks in labor on website product maintenance through the Shop Local platform. They have chosen Shop Local to expand their online store assortment and offer a gift registry program.
FairyTales, Inc. is celebrating 30 years of ...
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We watch trends to share them with our members and help them capture orders. Forbes shares 35 helpful e-commerce statistics and we picked out a few highlights for you below:
Key Statistics:
20.1% of retail purchases are expected to take place online in 2024.
By 2027, 23% of retail purchases are expected to take place online.
E-commerce sales are expected to grow 8.8% in 2024.
52% of online shoppers report shopping internationally.
At Shop Local, it's our job to help find ways to grow your online business. Part of that job is researching different registry software to see if it could be a good fit for your store.
If you have a Shopify website and offer a gift registry service, you may have heard of Gift Reggie. Gift Reggie is a third-party Shopify app that seemingly integrates with your current website, making it easier to manage your registry offering and boost your online sales.