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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Bridge will pay 15% of your advertising costs for ads in Tableware Today and other applicable publications. For example, if you pay $2,000 for a Tableware Today ad, we'll pay you $300 towards the ad.
Benefits:
Save money. Make your advertising budget go further.
Get more retailers to sync your products.
Sell more. When retailers join you on Bridge, they report selling 18% more.
Show your indie retailers you support the shop local movement.
While buying a beer this past weekend in Philadelphia, I spotted this cool beer can with a ‘Back to the Future’ themed design. I was happy to see on the can, which is brewed by Three 3’s Brewery, a “Drink Local” campaign. Supporting local businesses, whether they are breweries or gift shops, is a mission dear to us.
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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Ronald Reagan said, “If you’re explaining, you’re losing.” Reaganomics usually refers to tax cuts and trickle down economics, yet I propose that we take the Gipper’s quote and ask: How can simplicity contribute to a business's success?
When we share what leading companies do, we can often skip an explanation and sum it up in a brief sentence. Examples:
Today’s Gen Z gift registrants want to do everything online, often on their iPhone 14. They want to start a registry, add products, remove products, edit quantities, and view purchases. They don't want to call the store to do this.
In the adoption of digital tools, another trend is also at play: female shoppers are busier than before. Today, more women graduate from college than men. Women are increasingly doctors, CEOs, and world leaders. (Italy just welcomed its ...
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In the early 2000s, the board game Cranium became a hit. The game combined elements of Scrabble and Pictionary with the goal of helping more people enjoy playing a game. Richard Tait, who created Cranium and sold it to Hasbro in 2008 for $77.5m, passed away in July. Like Mr. Tait, I had been a paperboy, but he went beyond what I ever offered: he came up with a new service that sold breakfast sandwiches along his newspaper route. He increased profits and made customers happier. ...
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Bridge has updated your Bridge Shop's domain address. Your site's URL now includes "myshoplocal.com." If you look at the top of your account, you will see this domain in the web browser's URL field. Specifically, we changed the URL from [YourBusinessName].bridgecatalog.com to [YourBusinessName].myshoplocal.com.
Some people like to sit on the sofa and eat Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. I roll my eyes at this because I’m very different: I like to read the Wall St. Journal’s Christopher Mims …while eating an entire pint of Ben & Jerry’s on the sofa. This past weekend, Mr. Mims suggested companies may be reassessing where they source products, some even considering more domestic production. The motivation for this started a few years ago with the U.S.-China trade war, ...
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We send an email to customers after they make a purchase on a retailer's website. The email thanks the customer for shopping local. A customer replied with this message:
From: Sherrie **********
Subject: Re: My pleasure
Date: January 7, 2022 at 3:51:33 PM EST
To: Jason Solarek
Mr. Solarek,
I cannot tell you what a pleasure it was to receive your email today. It was nice to see a CEO reach out to a customer in appreciation. In today’s busy world, that just doesn’t ...
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This cool graphic of a receipt shows the impact of shopping small. AmEx’s shop small campaign, which overlaps with the shop local movement, encourages customers to shop at local, mom-and-pop businesses. Shopping at indie businesses allows customers to get items quickly and discover new finds.
We support the shop local movement and the AmEx shop small campaign. Bridge helps this movement by filling the websites of America’s best indie shops with thousands of products, ...
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Last week, a gift shop in Alabama signed up for Bridge and had a coaching call with Jordyn, our retailer coach. Within one day, the retailer had a Bridge Store offering 15k products and a full suite of online services to serve its customers. (See the store's Bridge account here: https://shealeighs.bridgecatalog.com)
I’m even amazed at what our software can do! Our software requires a lot of parts to come together: our tech team codes the software, our coaches call the stores...
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Upon boarding my flight to Mexico last week, did I eagerly wait the arrival of the bar cart? Maybe, but not before cracking open the book Great by Choice by Jim Collins. I recommend the book because it provides new approaches to success. One takeaway in the book is not new: we’ve got to work each day. Just like the anecdote in the book’s introduction about Norwegian explorer Amundsen, we have to put in miles each day. In a race to the South Pole, Amundsen's unprepared ...
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