Peloton’s new CEO, Barry McCarthy, was recently interviewed in the New York Times (Read the article here: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/19/business/dealbook/barry-mccarthy-interview-peloton.html). The authors asked Mr. McCarthy if he thought that everyone who needs a workout bike already had one. They questioned where else a company making stationary exercise bikes can go (…an ironic question for a bike product that literally can’t move). The Times wanted to know what ...
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This past weekend on the way to Florida to visit my brothers, I read about Squarespace’s advertising history. (Read the article: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/13/business/how-did-squarespace-know-podcasts-would-get-this-big.html). In 2009, Anthony Casalena, the founder of Squarespace, paid $20,000 to advertise on a tech podcast. While that was a lot for a small, young company (Casalena had started his business just six years earlier in a dorm room in 2003), Casalena said the ...
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Most e-commerce platforms isolate you and leave you adrift. Bridge connects you with your business friends.
Bridge's unique features:
Built-in Social Network: Friend your business friends on Bridge. This allows you to share news and files, message each other, support accomplishments with one another, and share your passions.
Product Syncing Between Retailers and Brands: Save $1,000 and 50 hours on every 1,000 products you add to your store by using Bridge's
I recently bought a pair of jeans from the bike-lifestyle company Rapha. I find Rapha's stores, emails, and mission to be inspiring to Bridge, and I'll explain why.
First, you may ask, "What is Rapha?" Rapha is a product company that sells goods for biking, including shirts, shorts, helmets, and accessories. What is unique is the lengths it goes to foster a community (and sales!) by having a coffee shop in it, organizing riding events, offering members-only clothing...
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Last February e-commerce company Shopify Inc. replaced the “Ottawa, Canada” dateline that began its press releases and earnings reports with a strange new one: “Internet, Everywhere.” The geographical shift came at the insistence of Shopify’s founder and chief executive officer, Tobi Lütke, who tends to view such matters through the prism of cold, hard logic. In May 2020, only a few months into the pandemic, he’d made the early, seemingly rash decision to...
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Most industry trends can be drawn on a napkin—or a 8.5” x 11” piece of paper. I’ve found that drawing operational structures leads to clarity and helps illuminate future trends.
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"Are you happy?” That’s a question you may ask yourself. Your parents and friends also likely inquire (I hope!). While it may seem flaky to say, happiness is important. This topic was the subject of Dr. Edward Diener, who passed away in April of this year. Dr. Diener, who studied happiness and earned the moniker “Dr. Happiness,” reported that happiness often correlates with social relationships, being with others, and not being alone.
Let’s imagine a retailer wants to operate an online store. What would the retailer and its customers experience when using Bridge vs other software? We found that a retailer using Bridge can go from having no web store to one with thousands of products in under an hour. And, there’s no charge. Other software doesn’t offer this ability.
To highlight our findings, we put together this comparison graphic showing Bridge Store and Shopify. (We chose Shopify to ...
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I enjoyed today’s WSJ article about stores teaming up to take on Amazon. Since Bridge has collectivized 800 indie shops to push back against Amazon, we can relate to efforts to help stores team up and boost their communities.
The article mentions Shopify and its popularity among indie shops. Shopify, along with BigComerce, Big Cartel, Wix, and Magento, are platforms that have helped indies to grow online independent of Amazon.
While we appreciate any platform that helps indies...
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Business leader Scott Galloway said this past week on his podcast Pivot that "complexity is a tax on the poor." I'd expand on that and posit that: complexity is a tax on indie businesses.
What if indie businesses could reduce the complexity and costs of running an online business? I believe we can. Bridge is reducing the costs of running an online business for more than a thousand businesses.
How do we reduce the 'tax'? Bridge often helps a retailer set up an online store ...
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In this video I share why retailers don’t add a brand’s products to their websites and therefore fail the brand and themselves in the e-commerce race.
Bridge’s Smart Products marketing service ‘bridges’ the gaps in online distribution. Bridge's service helps brands show 100% of the brand’s products on an infinite number of retailers’ Bridge Stores. The retailer can use Bridge Store as a stand-...
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Best of Thymes, an indie store in Iowa, just closed (https://bestofthymes.bridgecatalog.com/news.cfm?id=20645). Hopefully, they’ll continue to operate online and keep using Bridge. Best of Thymes is part of an industry-wide series of closures that is affecting large and small retailers. Due to this, brands are increasing their efforts to go D2C. Brands justify this by saying that there are fewer stores to show their wares. While this is true, surely they are motivated by: 2x the margins. ...
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As a group, we're stronger. 'Me' websites, like those offered by Shopify, put businesses in a silo and isolate them. The store is left to fend for itself alone.
In contrast, Bridge is a social e-commerce platform that leverages the strengths of the group. We crowd-source product maintenance to show more products and sell more.
As such, be believe in: We > Me. This is 'the algebra of Bridge' ;)
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This WSJ Shopify review compares some of the fees charged by Amazon and Shopify. It takes the author half the article before he starts sharing fee structures. (I’d have liked to see more statistics about fees charged and even a chart.)
Excerpts:
Shopify, founded in 2007 and now publicly traded, has 1.7 million sellers (note: that’s a brick-and-mortar store or a person in their basement; Shopify doesn’t differentiate).
There are many e-commerce platforms from which to choose. A store owner can choose from more than 30 platforms including Bridge, Shopify, Big Commerce, and Big Cartel. Unfortunately, very few software providers are easy to set up and use. Most importantly, they may not improve retail sales. A store owner is surely mindful of increasing costs and wasting time on software.
Bridge, our e-commerce platform, helps more than 700 indie stores offer a website and bridal registry that...
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Clients choose Bridge because we bring together many of the benefits of selling on Amazon or using Shopify.
To understand this, it helps to first view the e-commerce provider spectrum. Marketplace sites are on the left, and solo sites are on the right. In the marketplace model, the store's logo (the seller's logo) is often nowhere to be seen. The seller is like a cog in the machine working for 'da man (aka Jeff Bezos). On the other end, there is the solo website for ...
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Reports suggest that 50% of purchases start on Amazon.com, and Amazon wants to keep it this way. Yet, businesses and merchants increasingly want to sell their products via their own DTC (direct to consumer) site, retailers' websites, Facebook, Instagram, and more. Due to this, Shopify, which powers many DTC and retailer websites, is a growing thorn in Amazon's dominance of retail. Shopify reportedly helps power more than 30% of online U.S. retail sales.