Bridge is offering a new promotion where your brand will earn $250.00 when you mention your Bridge membership in your price list or catalog.
Details:
Display Bridge's ShopLocal.org logo in your price list or catalog. Suggested text: “More easily sell our products by joining us on Bridge. To join, please visit http://www.ShopLocal.org.”
Please email us a copy of your price list or catalog.
Over the last 15 years, brands have been increasingly doing a run-around to bypass their retailers and sell direct. Some brands suggested they’d never have a physical store. Some brands said they’d never have their products sold in another retailer’s physical store. What allowed the brands this hubris? The internet and Facebook. With the internet, brands would have a ‘store’ anywhere the customer is, and with Facebook, they could target them.
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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The next book our Bridge team may read is John List’s book The Voltage Effect. List, who is a behavioral economist at the University of Chicago, shares a variety of suggestions to grow a business. He warns us about false positives, such as what the “Just Say No” drug campaign experienced. He suggests we look for businesses with scalable ingredients. (People are not scalable, but good news for Bridge: software is!)
I'd add to List's advice this simple maxim: show ...
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We'll be at the trade show. We're happy to meet with you to review your account, show you new features, and help you boost your online business.
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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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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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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.
In this month’s HFN magazine, Editor Allison Zisko gives Bridge a shout out in her ‘Letter from the Editor’ column. She encourages the home goods industry to adopt digital marketplaces (trade shows) now, and notes that Bridge started offering an online platform for the tabletop industry years ago.
She notes that many big, well-funded trade shows (read IMC, which may spend $100m, and Messe) have suddenly seen the writing on the wall and are building competitors to Faire...
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During the trade shows, retailers ask brands for price lists, Excel files, and PDFs. Did you know Bridge can help retailers and brands store and share these files?
You can load and share these types of files:
Price lists
Excel files
Catalogs
PDFs
These files also appear alongside Bridge Smart Products. Businesses have one easy spot to see products AND files. Only Bridge lets you show real-time, organized products alongside files.
All the pieces are coming together: Just picked up Bridge flyers for the trade shows, and then walked by our mosaic on St. Marks Place.
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June 8, 2019
June 8, 2019
E-commerce is going to double in the next seven years, predicts FedEx. When that happens, how prepared will your business be? How will you prepare your website, your staff, your shipping procedures, your pricing, and your sales expectations?
When e-commerce grows that much, who will control the market? How will customers shop? Via their mobile? Via Alexa? If e-commerce is the dominant form of shipping, how will your online product selection and prices be kept up to date online? If online ...
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April 10, 2019
April 10, 2019
Does your brand have a high 'digital IQ'? Gartner shares that 62% of brands that deal with B2B have a low digital IQ.
Excerpt: "B2B companies have historically relied on manual and in-person methods to market and sell their products. Those include connections made at trade shows, tried-and-true sales team relationships, and channel partner agreements that have been in place for eons...[sic] Manufacturing brands must dramatically advance their digital competencies to keep up with massive shifts in ...
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August 22, 2018
August 22, 2018
What Does the Gump's Bankruptcy Mean for Your Business?
As you likely know, Gump’s filed for bankruptcy. The famous San Francisco indie store's crash is having wide-ranging consequences for our industry. 41 Madison tenants likely lost more than $1,000,000 on Gump's.
Yet, the economy and stock market are doing very well. How to explain these contrarian events? Furthermore, you surely are asking: How did Gump's reach this low--and more ...
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