Since we support brick-and-mortar retailers, we found Nike’s u-turn regarding retailers to be welcome. They initially planned to cut off 30% of stores but have since returned to them.
How an invitation from Syncing brand Mackenzie-Childs helped this retailer offer 2661 more products in only one day
April 22, 2024
We are pleased to announce that Olive Branch Gardens in Wallace, North Carolina, has joined Shop Local to grow their online business. Olive Branch Gardens is a florist and gift store with a limited selection of MacKenzie-Childs products on their primary Shopify website.
Olive Branch Gardens saved $2,740 and 4 weeks in labor on website product maintenance through the Shop Local platform. They have chosen Shop Local to expand their online store assortment and offer a gift registry program.
Have you ever encountered a space so breathtaking that you find yourself pausing to admire its sheer artistry? Casa Azul, nestled amidst the desert-like surroundings of Grândola, Alentejo in Portugal, is precisely such a place.
With its ochre-tinted walls carefully designed not to clash against the sandy landscape, Casa Azul provided the perfect backdrop for our Marrakesh collection photoshoot. Inspired by the vibrant colors of Morocco, from sandy shades to ochre hues, soft greens to ...
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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).
The Wall St. Journal shares how Amazon takes other companies’ ideas on a mass scale, such as from Trader Joe’s. The article is an excerpt from “The Everything War: Amazon’s Ruthless Quest to Own the World and Remake Corporate Power,” a new book by Dana Mattioli.
How Taco Ball is going digital first--and others would be wise to follow
April 13, 2024
Fast food is stuffing itself with software. Yum Brands, which owns Taco Bell and Pizza Hut, is embracing a few strategies we’ve chatted about, including software bundles and membership programs. It’s even investing in AI. Its budget: $21m last year. That’s a lot of lettuce.
Does the market merit it? Well, 45% of Yum’s sales are digital. Likewise, we’re hearing website sales make up about half of our merchants' sales. Note: We’re not half of every ...
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What your business can learn from the celebrated economist Daniel Kahneman
April 3, 2024
Daniel Kahneman, the celebrated economist, passed away last month. The Nobel Prize and Presidential Medal of Freedom winner gave us insights into the economics of the mind, such as people fearing loss more than gain, making short sighted decisions, and overly relying on feelings.
We can often use Mr. Kahneman's insights in our business's daily operations.
A McKinsey study found that the average life span of companies listed on the S&P 500 was 61 years in 1958; today, it’s less than 18 years. McKinsey believes that by 2027, 75% of S&P 500 companies will have disappeared. New businesses have an 81% chance of surviving their first year; in two years, a little less than 70% of businesses are still standing. Only 25% make it to 15 years or more. There’s a clear long-term trend of declining corporate longevity, with this figure ...
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We support the shop local ecosystem, and an ingredient in that is local jobs. Marc Levinson in The Wall St. Journal reviews two books that address made-in-the-U.S.A. ventures.
Spoiler alert: Doing the right thing often costs more. These all likely cost more: Shopping local, using local labor, and running local manufacturing. If you’re involved in one of these area, we hope you’ll appreciate those in the others. I’ve met local shop owners that outsource their ...
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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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Designer Don Estabrooks just may have the most compelling flatware portfolio ever. The longtime Towle Silversmiths designer joined the company in the mid-’60s and has created hundreds of flatware patterns in an almost six-decade (and counting) tenure.
Perhaps his greatest achievement is Wave, which debuted in 2004 to rousing fanfare and has been at the top of the charts ever since. Chris Wile, another longstanding staffer (33 years), is president of Lifetime Brands/Metals (which owns ...
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I have a friend who recently took a job with a respected women’s clothing retailer after 13 years of retirement. My friend, Leslie, a former school teacher, wanted to be of use and knew that retail was a great opportunity for seniors. She was all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed her first week. She loved that the manager asked her to try on clothes she liked and then suggested outfits that would look good on her. Leslie even purchased a few of those suggestions, couture she never would have ...
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The article also shares that Cyber Monday (the Monday after Thanksgiving), which was launched in 2005, is now the biggest online-shopping day of the year.
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Small businesses are getting hacked via Facebook ads, shares Today’s The Wall St. Journal. The ads purport to offer Google’s AI engine Bard, but instead steal the business’s social media account access.