Glassworks and Cheeks will be open Christmas Eve for last minute gift shopping and holiday decorating. Pictured are the Juliska Stockings, new for 2021. These heirloom pieces are waiting to take part in your treasured Holiday traditions.
Stop in either location to finish your shopping!
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Last week, a gift shop in Alabama signed up for Bridge and had a coaching call with Jordyn, our retailer coach. Within one day, the retailer had a Bridge Store offering 15k products and a full suite of online services to serve its customers. (See the store's Bridge account here: https://shealeighs.bridgecatalog.com)
I’m even amazed at what our software can do! Our software requires a lot of parts to come together: our tech team codes the software, our coaches call the stores...
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This video shares how Bridge helped gift shop Sassafras in Mississippi. We helped Nancy, the owner, setup an online store and gift registry filled with 12k products in under 2 hours for free.
I am sending the Ivystone sales rep Laura Zanone two $200 checks. Bridge gives sales reps a finder's fee when they sign up a retailer for a Bridge Store. The rep promotes Bridge Store because it helps the store sell more--which is good for the store and the rep.
Laura helped her stores save thousands of dollars and weeks of time. In total, she saved her stores over $6,000 and 10 weeks in labor.
Pizazz, a bridal and gift shop in Columbus, MS, signed up for a Bridge Store yesterday. It instantly received from Bridge an online store and an online gift registry for free. Within one day, it also offered 23,000+ products online. The store was able to quickly offer so many products using Bridge's Smart Products service. The service crowdsources product maintenance and allows each respective brand to manage its items behind the scenes.
For decades, brands have paid retailers to set up a display in the retailers' stores. Ralph Lauren's Polo, Nautica, Jimmy Choo, and other leading brands have paid department stores to set up displays and manage their brand appearance. This helps the brand and the stores increase sales.
As we all know, retail has gone digital. Thirty percent of retail sales are now online. What if there was a way for brands to sponsor displays like these physical ones but do so online? ...
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A customer emailed one of our client's this morning. The customer sent the email to praise the store's marketing effort. That marketing effort was designed and is managed by: Bridge. It required no effort by the store.
How the marketing works:
A customer buys a registry gift for a couple.
Approximately a year later, the Bridge software emails the customer on the couple's wedding anniversary. The email reminds the customers that it is the couple's anniversary.  
Mug and Pia, a gift shop in Wilmington, NC, shares six services on its home page. These services help customers. We're happy to see Bridge displayed.
A general trend in retail is stores outsourcing services to outside software providers. On Mug and Pia's home page, other third-party services shown include: Carlston Craft, Embossed Graphics, Awesome This!, Prints Well, and Ivy & Anchor.
Material Possessions, a gift shop in Illinois, needed a quick solution to boost its online presence. With Amazon and Covid-19 nipping at indie stores' heels, stores need to quickly boost their online offering.
In just 24 hours, Material Possessions opened a Bridge account and is currently offering 15,000+ products for sale. The retailer can sell these products directly from its Bridge Store--or it can export the products and import them into its parent website (https://...
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Customers are more likely to click blue hyperlinks. Due to this, Bridge is updating accounts to use more blue links. If your account has a gray horizontal navigation bar, we're updating this bar to instead have a white background with blue links.
In the example shown, we can see before and after screenshots for the gift shop Barbara Stewart Interiors. On the left, we see a dark gray horizontal bar with white text links. On the right, we see the new white bar with blue text links.
 ...
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Do businesses like Amazon that short-change our community affect our ability to respond to a crisis?
In this pandemic, Bridge thanks first responders and the many people that help our communities work together. When I think of communities during Covid-19, Amazon comes to mind. I do think there is value in looking back at the last 24 months leading up to today and asking: did Amazon slow down our community's ability to respond?
Amazon historically pays less in corporate taxes than other ...
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April 8, 2020
April 8, 2020
OK... you're NOT going to want to miss this!!! TOMORROW ~ Friday, April 10th, we'll be having our debut FACEBOOK LIVE from HEART'S DESIRE!!!
The presentation will be done with a MORE than 6ft distance radius and we will wipe down anything we touch because WE don’t want to get sick and don’t want our wonderful customers to either!
We want to visit a little, take a little tour of a few areas of the store and more than ANYTHING connect with all of you (and hope you&...
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Gift cards are becoming a popular way for customers to support indie stores. Your Bridge Store software includes gift cards. Friends, family, and shoppers can buy gift cards in any amount from your Bridge Store.
Steps to promote your gift card service:
1. Please visit your Bridge Store.
2. On your home page, on the left-hand side, please click on "Give a Gift Card."
3. Once on your gift card page, if you are logged in, you can add a custom picture of your store's...
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Make your website shine for the holidays: share holiday slides
For example, Beatriz Ball's shared slides with a platter and a cake stand. These slides show how products can used during the holidays and make Beatriz Ball products more appealing to customers. Elizabeth Clair's, a gift shop in Mississippi, shared slides showing its store and Arte Italica Christmas plates.
Take some inspiration from The Flower Shop in Auburn, Alabama. The florists and gift shop sent their clients an attractive email announcing their Bridge Registry.
By using Bridge, The Flower Shop was able to quickly create an online store with a gift registry--and have it filled with 13,000 products. Their Bridge Store was instantly populated with 4,500 Herend products, 1,800 Vietri products, 400 Arte Italica products, and 300 Annieglass products. ...
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Your Bridge now helps you share files more easily. You can easily load PDFs, Excel files, price lists, and more via your Bridge Library. Your business friends will see your files on their Dashboard, as well as in their respective Library.
In the example shown, Babcock Gifts, the premier gift shop of Tennessee, can view files from Mary Jurek, DeVine Corporation, Badash, Casafina, and BIA Cordon Bleu.
When viewing a file on the Dashboard, you can like it, save it, or download it. You can ...
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October 22, 2019
October 22, 2019
We're happy that REI, with 154 stores and $2.4b in revenue, is finally catching up to Bridge.
REI, the outdoor gear retailer, made news last week when it announced that it was offering an expanded selection of gear online from big brands like Salomon (the outdoor, athletic shoe company).
Excerpt:
The expansion allows customers to choose from a wider range of products. "This functionality opens up so many doors for our customers and gives them access to new sizes and styles of products that we ...
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July 2, 2019
July 2, 2019
Good news: your indie store just gained some ground on Amazon.
About 60% of Amazon sales are via third-party sellers. They pass thru what it calls the 'marketplace.' These Amazon purchases have not historically been taxed because the purchase is made from a business in one state and shipped to another state. But that loophole started to close last year when the Supreme Court ruled that states can collect tax on these types of Internet purchases.
Many state laws have acted on that Supreme ...
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