How a company's sales and growth can be affected by the message it conveys to customers.
July 18, 2023
Allbirds stock is down 95% since its November 2021 initial public offering. People may say the company launched the wrong products (did you buy one of their puffer jackets?) or tried to grow too quickly. I believe there is a larger reason: you can’t scale a company by leading with an environmental message—which is Allbirds’s pitch. Consumers rank saving the planet as one of their least pressing concerns when making a purchase. The leading factors consumers look for when ...
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An East Village Artist’s Death Prompts a Reflection on the State of Indie Retailers Today
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While thumbing through the Times, I noticed a smiling young woman’s picture in the obituaries. In the black and white photograph, she's standing on a fire escape with a historic building and a bridge in the distance. I was initially attracted to Ronni Solbert’s 1959 picture, yet I was even more drawn in by what I noticed next to her photo: a children&...
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Companies with deep pockets and big connections to Wall St. have teamed up to make the Internet a dirtier place. Legislation is pending to make large sellers of new goods have to reveal the true seller of the good. The goal of the federal bill is to curtail the sale of fake and stolen goods through online marketplaces. This sounds logical. But not to: eBay, Poshmark, Mercari, and Etsy.
These businesses have hundreds of millions of dollars at stake from banks, investors, and rich people. They ...
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Two congresspeople are sponsoring a bill to help indie business fight abusive ADA lawsuits, shares Anne Flynn Wear, a writer for Furniture Today.
I know businesses that have been targeted by lawyers seeking to cash in on the ADA law. The defendants, even after they 'fix' their website, often have to settle for thousands of dollars.
The ADA was not written with websites in mind (the law was created in 1990--well before the Internet), and the law doesn't allow businesses a grace period to ...
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Sadly, we learned of this hack LAST week when it actually happened in...wait for it...April 2019–almost a year ago.
I predict that hacking is going to happen to more and more brands and stores in our industry. I think these victims will either turn over most online operations to a third party—or close due to costs. I know of a jewelry ...
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December 20, 2017
December 20, 2017
The new tax bill is good news for traditional brick and mortar retailers. Companies like Amazon that may use off-shore tax strategiesay lose some leverage.
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April 22, 2013
April 22, 2013
Today's WSJ reports on Congress' progress on taxing sales made online. Currently, people are supposed to self-report taxes for purchases made online when taxes are not paid at the time of purchase. The problem is that no one is self reporting taxes.
The new legislation proposes that businesses with at least $1 million in annual out-of-state sales or 50 or more employees collect tax.
Giving tableware and home good products green ratings and labels
The Ad Age article below describes how the European Commission may propose a system to put color-coded labels on cars designating how 'green' they are. What if this was done for home goods brands? For individual products?