We’ve been tracking brands that try to bypass stores, from Nike to some tabletop brands that will go unnamed. While Nike has backtracked from cutting out stores, Levi’s continues on the path shares this weekend’s The Wall St. Journal.
The last fifteen years have been marked by brands investing in their websites, sucking up customers via Facebook and Google ads, and bypassing their stores.
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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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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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Our retailers recently told us that customers are calling and asking about non-existent brides, and brides are asking about non-existent registry gift lists (e.g. wedding registry lists, baby lists).
We investigated the issues and below is what we found.
What is Happening:
We found that many of these purchases are coming from registrants that open a ‘universal registry’ on websites such as Zola or MyRegistry. These universal registry services allow the registrant to add ...
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Our retailers recently told us that they were confused by strange registry orders. The stores are receiving gift registry orders on their sites but the retailer does not have a registry for the gift recipient at its store. Customers are calling and asking about non-existent brides, and brides are asking about non-existent registry gift lists (e.g. wedding registry lists, baby lists).
We investigated the issues and below is what we found.
What is Happening:
We found that many of...
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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.
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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Your Bridge now makes it easier for you to connect with and sell your brands’ products. We have added a new page to invite brands to sync products. This page significantly reduces the number of steps that your store takes to invite a brand.
There is no charge for a member to send sync invites or sync products with a brand. Product Syncing is free for retailers, sales reps, trade marts, and interior designers. Participating brands pay for the service.
 ...
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NEW YORK, NY, Oct. 24, 2022 – Bridge, an e-commerce community, reported that it's helping indie stores rank on page one of Google in 76% of states for wedding gift purchases. The findings are based on a recent study that Bridge conducted regarding wedding registry purchasing.
Study Findings:
For 38 state searches, Bridge Stores appeared on page one of Google. This represents 76% of all states. When just calculating the states in which Bridge has clients (48),
Google is often considered the first stop when searching for information. Looking for a product? You'll likely head to Amazon.com, where due to its 350m product listings, 25% of purchases reportedly start. Facebook will be your go-to for finding friends and family due to its 2b profiles of people. Airbnb lets you search 5.6m places to stay. These businesses are likely your choice because people want a massive selection when conducting a search. Many of the world's most ...
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In 35 states, Bridge Stores appeared on page one of Google when doing a wedding registry related search. In many states, Bridge Stores dominated the results. For example, for Georgia and South Carolina searches Bridge Stores claimed six spots on Google's first page.
Study Details:
We Googled "gift registry" and the state’s name.
We researched results for 48 states. (Bridge has clients in 48 states; the only states that don
In her new book ‘Quit,' Annie Duke shares that the best poker players only play 25% of the hands they are dealt, whereas others play 50%. Ms. Duke talks with Stewart Butterfield, the founder of a few startups, most recently Slack (which is an acronym, which I didn’t know). Slack wouldn’t have been born if Mr. Butterfield didn’t drop a video game company to start Slack. Likewise for Twitter which was born out of the failed blogging company Odeo. Ms. Duke's lesson: winners ...
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Whenever I visit my 76-year-old mom in Myrtle Beach, SC, she picks me up and the oldies station is playing in her car. I’ve tried changing that dial, and one has a better chance of outmaneuvering tennis star Daniil Medvedev. I imagine the oldies music brings her back to her youth. I read a study that people’s favorite song is often when they were 17 years old. That’s right: the 'best songs’ may not be the best songs but rather simply be what you heard in ...
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Your Bridge has a new feature. You can now more easily manage your gift registry bonuses.
Background:
Your Bridge Store's Gift Registry software has a marketing program built in. This program gives registrants (e.g. brides) a monetary bonus if they complete five steps. Previously, when registrants reported that they added a link on their social media page, a store would have to ask the registrant on which platform they added the link. The same process occurred when the registrant reported ...
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If passed, the law would bar huge online platforms such as Amazon’s e-marketplace, Apple’s app store, and Google’s search engine from giving preferential treatment to the company’s own products and services, such as steering consumers to in-house products instead of competitors’ offerings in a way that harms competition.
In this e-commerce age, a store being found on page 1 of Google is very important. Online advertising has become much more expensive recently, making being found even more important. Being found in Google saves the store on costly advertising.
Sometimes a potential client asks me if their store uses Bridge Store software, will their store rank higher in Google? The answer: Yes. In this example, we Googled "gift registry texas." We see that Bridge retailers claimed ...
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In the movie Glengarry Glen Ross, a motivational speaker played by Alec Baldwin addresses a group of salesmen. He writes three letters vertically on the chalkboard, “A B C.” He explains that the acronym means "Always Be Closing."
The way that Baldwin's character thinks about sales, I may think about reading. I think of: "ABR,” Always Be Reading. Whether it's breakfast, lunch, or dinner, I try to get in a page or two of the Times, Wall St. ...
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This past week, Amazon announced it was adding Grubhub delivery to its Prime subscription (Read the news about Amazon and Grubhub here). The goal of Amazon Prime (and other subscription services) is to make the subscription so pervasive that it's sticky. Don’t like Prime movies? Ok, but you love free Grubhub delivery. If you don’t need feature X and want to cancel, you realize you still need feature Y and keep paying for the subscription.