At Shop Local, it's our job to help find ways to grow your online business. Part of that job is researching different registry software to see if it could be a good fit for your store.
If you offer a gift registry service, you may have heard of MyRegistry. MyRegistry is a third-party universal registry service that seemingly integrates with your primary website, stating that they "offer a suite of technology solutions [for retailers] that boost revenue, engage customers, and reduce ...
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How a drawing on a bar napkin led to a software platform that processes trillions of calculations
April 15, 2024
In 2007, while sitting at the pub Moran’s with a beer, I drew a sketch on a napkin that would change our business. I drew a software model that would allow an indie store to instantly show (and sell) thousands of products online—without any labor. (The secret sauce: The respective brand would do the product update work for the merchants.) The immediate goal was to help my two retailers more efficiently load products onto their websites (and save me the boredom of doing it).
As a store owner, you know how important it is to choose a registry service that works well for you, your employees, your registrants, and gift-givers (family and friends). In addition to working well, the registry service should offer your store good value (price vs. results).
When looking for registry software, some retailers consider MyRegistry.com for their registry service. MyRegistry.com offers gift registry creation and management features that integrate with a retailer's Shopify ...
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As a store owner, you know how important it is to choose a registry service that works well for you, your employees, your registrants, and gift-givers (family and friends). In addition to working well, the registry service should offer your store good value (price vs. results).
When looking for registry software, some retailers consider Gift Reggie for their registry service. Gift Reggie offers gift registry creation and management features that integrate with a retailer's Shopify ...
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How Store Owners Can Trade Wasted Labor Costs For a New Tesla Car
March 10, 2024
No one likes to pay for gas—just ask Tesla drivers. Chris Kornelis, a reporter for The Wall St. Journal, shares this week how he switched to a Tesla to save $100 a month ($1,200 a year!) on gas.
This story is important to us because if someone will pick a car to save $1,200 a year, we should be able to find what they need to save in order to pick Shop Local’s Online Store. Let’s learn from Chris and his Tesla choice.
Making Replacement Savings Easy to See
The new ...
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It’s hard to believe that MEPRA’s sophisticated technicolor collection FANTASIA is celebrating its 35th anniversary this year because its incandescent chromatic complexion is as fresh today as its 1989 debut.
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The brilliantly-hued fantasia comes from the Italian silversmiths Mepra, post-war business founded in 1947 by the Prandelli family, four generations fashioning flatware in the industrial Lumezzane Valley, about 90 minutes east of Milan. ...
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The Atlantic shares how Chinese factories have found a new way around U.S. retailers and into our homes: Chinese apps. SHEIN and other Chinese apps are bypassing Amazon to be a new leader in Chinese goods. In addition to Amazon, Target, Walmart, and indie shops now have a new group of digital competitors embedded in customers’ pockets.
Except from The Atlantic article:
MATERIAL WORLD
IS THIS HOW AMAZON ENDS?
An open embrace of cheap foreign products has helped ...
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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 ...
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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).
I have a stack of virtual news clippings that either struck my fancy, taught me something new, or just made me shake my head in bemusement. On their own, they may not be enough for me to make a point, but together they have a thought-provoking synergy (and I'm sure I'll figure out what that is by the end of this column).
Our industry has been negatively affected by the loss of American manufacturing after we entered a long stretch of automation and outsourcing in the late 1970s; every ...
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What Threads can teach us about leveraging our existing network when launching a new service.
July 22, 2023
Threads, a new Twitter-like service from Meta, the owner of Instagram, launched this month and almost immediately attracted 40m active daily users. The service’s growth has since stalled and now has just over 10m daily users, but that is still commendable. The Wall Street Journal shared that this impressive launch was largely possible because Meta used its built-in network of one billion Instagram users. This user base helped it overcome the “cold start” problem of acquiring ...
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What we can learn about a company through its mission statement.
June 30, 2023
This past week, I read a mission statement from The Knot's corporate website (https://www.theknotww.com/). The statement included a paragraph and five principles. The paragraph describes what the parent company does. The statement says:
"We help couples around the world navigate and enjoy life’s biggest moments together. As a global company, our industry-leading websites, top-ranked mobile apps, and trusted resources provide the most sought-after information, connections, and ...
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What Crocs can teach us about gaining new customers and keeping them happy.
May 15, 2023
About 15 years ago, I bought a pair of Crocs sandals in Myrtle Beach, SC. Not only were they hot pink, but the insole was traffic cone orange. My buddies hated them, but oddly others loved them. The sandals were affordable (maybe $20), comfortable, and a conversation starter.
According to last week’s The New York Times' profile on Crocs, I’m one of tens of millions of happy Crocs owners. This happiness is profitable:
THIN AND SIMPLE says it all, a perfect moniker for Pampa Bay’s latest juggernaut, a throwback to the shapes and looks the company achieved in stainless steel, its one-time material of choice, a decade ago. Then, in 2016, Carlos Barbagallo, president and owner, decided to segue into the dishwasher-safe, tarnish-free porcelain that looks like metal, using a proprietary, state-of-the-art technology that’s neither painted nor glazed. “Thin and Simple is our homage to the looks we ...
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How we can honor those that came before us in the retail industry.
March 2, 2023
The founder of Juan Pollo Chicken, Albert Okura, passed away last week at the age of 71. Mr. Okura envisioned Juan Pollo, a fast food chain with 25 locations in Southern California, as a household name that would someday sell the most chicken in the world. He believed in this so much that he bought the site of the original McDonald’s restaurant, located in San Bernardino, CA, in 1998—not to turn it into a Juan Pollo restaurant but rather into a museum to honor his fast food industry....
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Noma, the world-famous Copenhagen restaurant, is closing to concentrate on e-commerce. Excerpt from the Times:
“Noma will become a full-time food laboratory, developing new dishes and products for its e-commerce operation, Noma Projects, and the dining rooms will be open only for periodic pop-ups.”
This change supports the breath and power of e-commerce, and portends coming changes for our retail industry. It’s not that one can’t eke out a ...
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Work With the Nation's Leading Brands and Indie Shops to Support Main Street
Shop Local is a fast-growing e-commerce and gift registry platform providing services to leading independent retailers and premium brands. Based in New York, NY, Shop Local is seeking candidates to support the existing software and build out new services that will change the retail industry.
Shop Local has an opening for an entry level web developer to update the existing code base and write new applications. We are...
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We've added a new feature to your Bridge account: a registrant can now request redemption of a gift purchased on their registry.
When a registrant is logged in to their registry, they will see a "Request redemption of this gift" button next to items that have been gifted to them and that have a qualifying order status. The registrant can click the "Request redemption of this gift" button and fill out the form with the details of how they would like their gift to...
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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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