How restaurants, hotels, and tableware brands are using loyalty programs--and what indie stores can learn from this.
October 11, 2023
Perk-y
I recently read about a new loyalty program and wondered what we could learn from it. The founder of Eater and Resy, Ben Leventhal, has started Blackbird, a loyalty program service designed for indie restaurants, reports The New York Times (Read the article). Using the Blackbird app, a diner receives a perk for eating at a restaurant. The retailer sets tiers for which the user qualifies for the perk. For example, a restaurant, Nat’s on Bank in New York City, gives tier 1 customers ...
Read More
How technology hurts the entertainment industry just like Amazon hurts the retail industry.
August 1, 2023
Over the last three decades, Hollywood and many that rely on the entertainment industry have embraced ordering goods over Amazon.com. Recap: Amazon is a technology company that often cuts costs by replacing humans with code and robots and bypasses local red tape like, um, taxes and labor rules. Hollywood writers, producers, and ticket goers embraced a technology company that made their lives easier but often at the cost of others (aka retail workers).
How we can acquire new prospects by leveraging our existing network of customers.
June 2, 2023
In Andrew Chen’s book The Cold Start Problem, he breaks the network effect into three parts: engagement, acquisition, and economize. At Shop Local, we rely on the network effect and its three parts. I feel that we’re succeeding in terms of engagement but need improvement in acquisition.
Engagement
We use the 64,000 products in our Syncing service to engage 1,200 our retail clients. We email them new intros, price updates, archived items for these synced products. Once they ...
Read More
Scott Galloway, the NYU business professor and firebrand, pens a weekly, attention-grabbing article about business trends. In last week’s post, he noted the rise of the attention economy. (...Yes, my post is an attention-seeker writing about an attention-seeker writing about attention.) Comparing our current economy to those of the past, Mr. Galloway notes that today’s oil is time. He tracks the growth of digital companies like Netflix, Microsoft, Facebook, and TikTok that...
Read More
When I was a kid, my mom instilled in me a lesson to always get paid for my work. When I went to mow a lawn or do my newspaper route, she’d remind me, “Be sure you get paid.” As an adult, these flashbacks are vivid like a scene from Citizen Kane—just swap out the Rosebud sled with my newspaper delivery bike. Today, this lesson still resonates when running Bridge. When calling a store that hasn’t paid its Bridge bill, I’m confident in asking ...
Read More
I don’t own a car, yet I have a strange desire to read Dan Neil's car column each weekend in The Wall St. Journal. Why would someone who doesn’t own a car, won’t be buying one soon, and hasn’t owned one in 25 years read a car column? It's a mix of enjoying the design and technology of automobiles, wanting to know what Dwayne Johnson may be buying next, loving Dan’s witty writing style, and, confession, simply being 13-years old at heart. Cars are ...
Read More
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. ...
Read More
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.
When talking about memberships and subscriptions, these two business models are sometimes interchanged but actually are different. They often differ in their pricing, customers, and offerings. A subscription is often not a membership, but a membership often encompasses a subscription. A membership is often an elevated and more powerful subscription that collectivizes and leverages the subscribers.
What They Have In Common
With both models, you often pay a fee and receive a ...
Read More
How much does Bridge cost vs other marketing tools? Let's imagine a printed catalog costs $10 to print and send to a customer. The customer uses it for 10 minutes. It therefore costs $1 per minute.
The Bridge Smart Products service costs a brand $9 per year per retailer. Over that year, a retailer interacts with that Smart Product data for 104 minutes. This number is approximately 2 minutes per week. (Please note: some retailers view Smart Product data at a much higher rate, such ...
Read More
Many businesses are struggling during the state-mandated shelter-in-place orders. One industry that is weathering the storm well is technology. Technology companies often deliver services digitally, which obviously makes them ideal to side-step these orders--but they often utilize another feature that makes them profitable now and in general: subscriptions.
Scott Galloway, a business leader and host of an online business class called 'The Sprint,' recently brought to my attention the ...
Read More
Does Bridge help store owners live longer? For example, do we help Brooks Terry live longer? Store owner Susan Hoechner? The answer is yes, and I'll explain.
Bridge helps Susan and Brooks save months of time via the Smart Products service. This can be viewed as time saved--or more importantly: as an extension of their lives. As a reference, Scott Galloway, an NYU professor and media savant, recently made this insight regarding life-extending services:
"Walmart Delivery Unlimited: At $98/year,...
Read More
December 30, 2018
December 30, 2018
Tracking Amazon's antics can be a sobering task--but the comedian Hasan Minhaj makes it entertaining. In this recent Netflix show, he shares his views about Amazon.
Airbnb > Hyatt and hotel chains. Kayak > United and airlines. Netflix > MGM and the studios. Amazon > Macy’s and the retailers. Uber > Ford and the automobile companies.
View Post
July 6, 2017
July 6, 2017
Try, Then Buy? Amazon’s Move Is Part of a Shopping Trend
Read the story from today's NY Times. And it isn't only fashion sites and Amazon that are doing this. Jewelry stores are also getting into the act. Is Tabletop next?
Full text: When I was a child, I would watch my grandmother try on dresses and coats she had brought home on “appro” (or approbation) from Mrs. Downey’s boutique in Dungarvan, Ireland: deciding, at her leisure, what to buy and what to return. Who knew that, decades later, “appro,...
Read More
April 6, 2017
April 6, 2017
What is your average review in Bridge? 4 stars? Today's WSJ questions that most buisnesses are above average. :)
Netflix is replacing star ratings with a thumbs up or a thumbs down rating system.
View Post
November 12, 2015
November 12, 2015
TV ads are not for the rich, reports today's Times. Emily Steel says TV is watched by the aspirational while the truly wealthy use services like Netflix or HBO on demand. This article may speak to how retailers try to sell luxury items across other channels. Lexus reaches the rich not on TV but rather at events like the US Open and at art museums. The article also observes that most people envision themselves 10 years younger than they are and earning 2x as much as they truly do.
View Post
September 11, 2007
September 11, 2007
What the Tableware Industry Can Learn From Rupert Murdoch's Takeover of the Wall Street Journal
This past August Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. captured the crown jewel of the publishing word by purchasing The Wall Street Journal from the Bancroft family for $5 billion. What does this event have to do with us in the tabletop industry? I propose that there is a lot the industry can learn from Murdoch's coup. The main lesson is that investing in technology-and in particular online operations-is ...
Read More