A recent study conducted by Jungle Scout reports that many consumers prefer to support small and local businesses for their holiday shopping. 20% reported they will buy holiday gifts from indie stores, up from 10% last year. The report ranks independent retailers in 4th place for in-store shopping, surpassing Costco, Walgreen's Best Buy, Sam's Club, Macy's and Home Depot.
The article shares 53% of consumers bought online from independent stores on Small Business Saturday as reported by ...
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According to a recent RetailDive report, online and mobile purchases for Black Friday sales were the strongest, with smartphone sales leading at 54% of online sales. The article states consumers spent a record $9.8 billion online on Black Friday, according to data from Adobe Analytics. That’s up 7.5% from last year.
Industry experts forecast that consumer spending will be up 2-3% year over year. The National Retail Federation projects 3-4% year over year. Consumers are cautious about ...
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With our retail members in the throes of the holiday season, it was nice to read an article by Retail Dive providing some insight into Q4 2022. Retail Dive, a retail industry publication, informs readers that big-box stores share much of the same friction as our indie retailers do. I appreciated the acknowledgement that independent stores may feel disruptions quicker and may even have an edge on providing a more superior customer experience to gaining loyalty. The good news is that there are ...
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Retail Dive reports on Amazon's lazy claims that it cares about stopping counterfeits. Counterfeiters on Amazon may steal a brand's product design, name, and product pictures. When a brand reports this to Amazon, Amazon often does: nothing.
This is an issue for American brands. For example:
A brands creates a product. The brand pays for research and development.
Brand may pay to have it made in America.
Brand takes professional pictures of the finished product.
Thank you for joining July's Virtual Happy Hour. We had a wide variety of attendees from retailers to brands to reps. We discussed the pandemics's affect on market shows, shopping trends, and time-saving shortcuts in the software.
We recommend signing up for Tableware Today's print publication: https://...
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December 17, 2019
December 17, 2019
Are your store displays 'frozen' in time? Compare Target and Kohl's Frozen 2 displays.
Retail Dive shares this observation:
A "Frozen 2" display at Target (top photo) fosters discovery, while the same goods at Kohl's (pictured lower) are stacked efficiently. "The two photographs say everything about how those companies operate," says retail consultant Sanford Stein.
Retail Dive gives us six reasons via six statistics:
1. 100 stores The number of Macy's locations closed since August 2016, as well as the number of stores that off-price retailer Ross opened in 2019 alone
2. $19 billion Projected off-price sales by 2021
3. $20.4 billion The amount department store sales have dropped over the past five years
4. $14 billion The amount in sales that Costco's Kirkland Signature private label outpaced all of Macy's nationwide sales last year
Amazon most likely has lower prices than most stores--including yours, shares Retail Dive.
Excerpt: "With the holiday sales season underway, Amazon is pricing 20% below other online retailers on average in key product categories, according to a study by Profitero."
You may ask, how is Amazon wining this online price war? I'll share my answer: Bots. Amazon has unleashed an army of bots to crawl and scrub all of your data and websites, and report it back to Amazon ...
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October 22, 2019
October 22, 2019
How can you prepare for Black Friday / Cyber Monday? Here's a checklist:
1. 'Seed the sale' by telling customers to expect deals. "Promote sales, promote sales, promote sales," said Sucharita Kodali, principal analyst of e-business and channel strategy at Forrester. "It's the number one thing that shoppers look for during the holidays." (Source: Retail Dive)
You can do this via posts on Bridge and social media.
2. Craft an irresistible offer.
3. Organize your upcoming sales / discounts. You can do ...
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October 14, 2019
October 14, 2019
More customers plan to shop online than in-store this holiday season:
Fifty-four percent of survey respondents said they plan to shop online and 46% plan to shop in-store during the 2019 holiday season, shares Retail Dive from a PwC survey.
Just as recently as 2015, the equation was flipped: 58% of shoppers purchased goods in-store and 42% did so online.