How are brands helping their stores--and themselves? They are telling retailers that Bridge is a sales solution for them. For example, Pampa Bay doubled its sales vs. last year on the Bridge platform. One way Pampa Bay increased its sales is by consistently promoting its Bridge service across various mediums. When one visits the Pampa Bay site, one can see the platforms the brand uses in the upper right-hand corner. We can see the brand uses Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and Bridge. Pampa...
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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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I recently saw an advertisement for Windows 11 in Wired magazine. I thought: “Wow, finally something from Microsoft that someone can understand: a logical name for their software offering.” I recall a time when Microsoft had a confusing litany of software names including: NT, 98, 2000, Millennium (ME), Windows XP, and Vista--before finally relegating those clumsy names to the desktop recycle bin and adopting a simple, progressive number system. Apple has been naming its ...
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Scott Galloway, a business leader and NYU professor, shares that we're now spending over 4 hours a day on our mobile phones--up from just 20 minutes in 2010. (…I wrote part of this post on my iPhone.) What does this mean? Lots of opportunities for Amazon--as well as Facebook, Instagram, and other tech titans--to sell to us. Our cell phones are, in essence, 1,000 'buy buttons' in our pockets (or on our nightstands) that encourage us to buy stuff online, any time of the day.
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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Thieves are ransacking traditional brick-and-mortar stores and then selling the goods on Amazon—where Amazon may get a 30% commission. The irony: the store is deprived of the initial sale AND Amazon wins.
I believe that Amazon makes it easy to sell stolen goods online because sellers can often remain hidden and provide little contact or authorizing information. I have witnessed how hard it is to find out who the seller of a product is on Amazon. Amazon is likely America’s ...
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When I was 24-years old, a market research company sent me to Philadelphia to survey potential users about a new offering from General Electric Finance. Your first question may be: "Wait, Jason was once 24?" Your second may be: "GE had a consumer finance arm?" Yes, and yes. GE was once a conglomerate with its hands in many industries, from television to nuclear reactors to jet engines. GE, like Toshiba and Johnson & Johnson, has since shrunk. But the era of the ...
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It’s that time of year when we gather for Fall Entertaining. We would love your Customers incredible photos and videos celebrating the season by showing off your friends and family getting together to share appetizers, gathering for drinks or a meal, or your own get-together idea—showing camaraderie, congeniality, and what a treat it is to be together, for a chance win! *Retailers & their families are not eligible.
$100 each will be donated to Feeding America on behalf of 6 ...
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While watching Salvage Kings, a Hulu TV show about a Canadian salvage company, I learned that the Nash automobile company’s 1920s slogan was "Give the customer more than he has paid for.” From Wikipedia, I learned the cars lived up to their slogan:
“Innovations included a straight-eight engine with overhead valves, twin spark plugs, and nine crankshaft bearings in 1930....A long-time proponent of automotive safety, Nash was among the early mid- and low-priced cars ...
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WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 6 12:30-2:30PM IN STORE BOOK SIGNING!
Hope to see you all at this fun book signing! @thebakermamablog, Maegan Brown will be at Heart's Desire Frisco signing her new book, "Spectacular Spreads". If you loved her first book, "Beautiful Boards", then this one will blow you away! It's a collection of event ideas, recipes and INCREDIBLE instructions and photographs to help you every step of the way!
Don't Miss It! (if you can't be there...
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I've watched brands use social media to do an end-run around retailers. A recent article from RetailDive substantiates this. Excerpt:
"75% of social media users said they increased their purchases from brands they follow... A 2021 study from NPD found that 51% of survey respondents said they bought items thanks to content in their Facebook and Instagram feeds."
Translation: 75% of shoppers bought more from brands directly--which is bad for retailers. The article ...
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Hurray for Grandma’s China! They are hot and selling briskly once again.
“There was a long time when no one wanted to inherit Grandma’s prized wedding china, so valued she only busted them out for special occasions. Potential heirs dreaded the bequest thinking them fussy.” said Rebecca Malinsky of the Wall Street Journal. We agree with her.
But some new thinking has arrived recently, as people, especially young ones, are taking another look.
And they are thinking ...
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Brands share their products with stores via the Smart Products marketing platform. Wouldn't it be helpful to see how those products are performing? Now you can. We added a new feature to help Smart Brands see how their products are performing. When a Smart Brand partner browses to a product in its Bridge account, it will now see a 'Product Performance' area. If you use Instagram, this feature may feel familiar. Instagram lets you view performance statistics for posts. We have brought ...
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I’m seeing a disturbing trend online. Stores are not sharing news and events on their websites. Instead, they are relying on Facebook (and Instagram, which it also owns) to perform this task. That’s like a customer coming into the physical store and the store manager saying: "Want our news and events? We don’t have it here. Go to the coffee shop next door—which will be filled with our competitors pitching to you."
The Times shares that the FTC will have a new leader that is knowledgable about Amazon.
Excerpts:
In her new role, Ms. Khan will lead efforts to regulate the kind of behavior highlighted for years by critics of Amazon, Facebook, Google and Apple. She told a Senate committee in April that she was worried about the way tech companies could use their power to dominate new markets. The agency is investigating Amazon, which Ms. Khan has been highly critical of, and filed an antitrust lawsuit ...
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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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