We are pleased to announce that JK Adams is joining the Brand Syncing Service.
JK Adams is known for their beautiful handcrafted wooden items that make baking, food preparation, and presentation effortless. The assortment includes unique products that range from cutting boards, rolling pins, coasters, and charcuterie boards to pot racks.
JK Adams products will be ready for syncing by July 3rd.
Stores that are already Shop Local members will be alerted when JK Adam's data is ...
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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 ...
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The Wall St. Journal reports that Barnes & Noble has updated its subscription discount program. Previously, it had one tier that was $25/year. Now, Barnes & Noble has a two-tier system. There is a free program that offers rebates based on what you spend, and a $40/year program that gives you rebates plus more discounts and some perks at its cafes.
The new memberships are meant to help the bookseller better compete with Amazon's Prime and Walmart+.
How setting goals for our new members can help them be more successful.
January 31, 2023
When growing our network, we consider what it takes to keep existing members and grow into other industries. Andrew Chen in The Cold Start Problem reports that Facebook famously wanted a user to get 10 friends in a week because then the person would likely use the service. Similarly, Slack said users with about 10 connections tend to become active users. My company currently doesn’t have such new user benchmarks and we need to develop them.
Adding New Retail Members to the Product...
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How having the right defaults makes decisions easier for clients and helps them be more successful.
January 27, 2023
When you look at your driver’s license, it lists if you’re an organ donor. Twenty years ago, only 20% of people were donors, but today 80% are—thereby saving millions of lives. Did people become more kind? No, the question on the application was changed from opt-in to opt-out. People signing up for or renewing a license are now by default enlisted in organ donation. Lesson: the right default answer in medical care can save millions of lives. Similarly, the right defaults ...
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In the book The Cold Start Problem, Andrew Chen says that the 'network effect’ is really three effects:
The acquisition effect
The engagement effect
The monetization effect
In the beginning, a business seeking to build a network has to concentrate on acquiring users, even if they are non-paying. Companies often give away the service, especially software companies, and we can see that with Facebook, Slack, TikTok, and many others. Bridge didn’t do ...
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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 ...
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MEMBERSHIP SURGES 50% IN E-COMMERCE COMMUNITY Online Shopping Boom Drives Retail Industry to Team Up On Bridge
NEW YORK, NY, July 30, 2021 – Bridge, an e-commerce community, reported a record increase in membership as the pandemic continued to rattle the retail landscape. In the last 12 months, 275 retail stores joined Bridge, bringing the total membership to more than 826 stores—a 50% increase. ...
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Pizazz, a bridal and gift shop in Columbus, MS, signed up for a Bridge Store yesterday. It instantly received from Bridge an online store and an online gift registry for free. Within one day, it also offered 23,000+ products online. The store was able to quickly offer so many products using Bridge's Smart Products service. The service crowdsources product maintenance and allows each respective brand to manage its items behind the scenes.
This past week I finally started doing a better job of sharing our vision. A company’s vision and how it shares this story is a key pillar in its growth. A company can grow without being a good vision sharer (storyteller), but it makes the growth slower and harder. When one gets up on stage (metaphorically) and shares their vision, with passion, it’s magnetic and can help split the sea. What medium did we add to our story-sharing tools this week? Video. I made and shared ...
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Companies that sell brands on Amazon are increasingly profiting by using a series of checklists, some with 503 steps, to ensure they maximize a brand's potential.
This article leads us to ask: if we could make a checklist with 503 to-do items, what would those be? What checklist should a retailer follow to succeed online? A brand? Bridge offers members a variety of checklists to help them succeed in including the New Member Success Checklist and the Smart Brand Boarding Checklist....
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RETAILERS AND BRANDS GRAVITATE TO BRIDGE AMIDST PANDEMIC
For Immediate Release
Businesses Rush to Bridge During Pandemic
July 27, 2020
New York, NY – Bridge, an online e-commerce community, saw significant increases in membership during the COVID-19 pandemic. Retail membership increased by 17% and nine brands joined the platform, including Lenox, Kate Spade, Dansk, and Richard Ginori.
Since the spring, eighty stores have joined Bridge’s e-commerce service, bringing the ...
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Material Possessions, a gift shop in Illinois, needed a quick solution to boost its online presence. With Amazon and Covid-19 nipping at indie stores' heels, stores need to quickly boost their online offering.
In just 24 hours, Material Possessions opened a Bridge account and is currently offering 15,000+ products for sale. The retailer can sell these products directly from its Bridge Store--or it can export the products and import them into its parent website (https://...
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FOR RETAILERS
Please join us for our new Bridge 101 webinar. We designed this training for new members. Existing members that want a refresher may also join us.
I'll take you through the Bridge platform and administrative settings.
I'll teach you how to:
Set up your Bridge Store.
Add products.
Add brands.
Setup taxes and shipping settings.
Navigate the important features needed to get your Bridge account up and running.