We are pleased to announce that Rutland's of Texarkana has joined Shop Local to grow its online tabletop and bridal registry business.  In the absence of tabletop and giftware stores in their hometown of Texarkana, the founders, Alexandra, Lauren, and Mindy (Mom and her 2 daughters) jumped on this missed opportunity and recently opened their store welcoming friends, neighbors, and loved ones. 

The store instantly received great benefits:

• Customers and registrants

While riding the train to Philadelphia recently,  I was drawn to this column’s prominent use of stats.  We learn that this cookbook author has: 88k Instagram followers, 27k TikTok followers, and 23k Substack subscribers. People are drawn to numbers because they suggest facts and can give a quick sense of importance, and easily make comparisons. A factor’s relevance may be hard to gauge and subjective, but social media helps by giving it a numeric value. Want a

NEW YORK, NY — June 9, 2025 – Shop Local, the innovative e-commerce and wedding registry platform empowering indie retailers, announced today the addition of world-renowned brand, SMEG, to its growing platform. This latest addition marks a significant expansion of Shop Local’s premium product offerings into the kitchen and home appliance markets and reaffirms the company’s commitment to supporting local retailers through cutting-edge technology.

Shop Local now works with

Ready to make the switch from Gift Reggie or MyRegistry to Shop Local? 

Good news: We can help AND you get $600.

• Easily move your registries from your existing provider to Shop Local.
• Our Coaches will help you import your registries for free. No charge.
• Make the switch before June 13th and get a $100 credit each month for 6 months. (Total of $600.)

Insights

• Sell 18% more: Stores often gain more than $78,000 in wedding registry sales annually with Shop Local's Gift

We're sad to share this is the last issue of Tableware Today. We will miss seeing our friends in the issues.

In the issue, Vista Alegre, Casa Alegre, Orrefors , and Kosta Boda promote the Shop Local platform.

• A brand displays our ShopLocal.org logo so that retailers reading the magazine know they can easily sell the products shown.
• When a brand offers our Syncing service, a retailer can instantly display the brand's entire product catalog online.
• The retailer's

I sometimes think of ourselves as digital landlords. Our clients rent their retail 'property' from us and pay a monthly rent. We are responsible for keeping the building up-to-date, the roof patched, and the sidewalk clean.  This real estate metaphor came to mind again recently when The Wall St. Journal shared how interior designers spruce up rentals and thereby rent them for more.

Article excerpt:
"[The upgraded rental property] Perch came online in December 2023,

We are pleased to announce that Velvet Magnolia has joined Shop Local to grow its online tabletop and bridal registry business after being referred by sales rep Greg Waylock of Cassmeyer Collection. Founded by owner Anne Lofton, Velvet Magnolia offers residential and commercial design services, gifts, bridal registry, large-scale furnishings, and more. 

The store instantly received great benefits:

• Customers and registrants can shop for 7k+ products online.
• The

We were happy to see HFN, our industry publication, celebrate our 2025 Best Wedding Registry Gift winners. Please find the article below:

Allison Zisko //Editor in Chief//April 30, 2025

NEW YORK — Shop Local, a wedding registry platform for independent retailers, has selected three tabletop brands and three retailers from among 100 finalists in each category for its Best Wedding Gifts awards.

The top brands are Herend, Juliska and Vietri. The top three retailers are

NEW YORK, NY — April 27, 2025 – Shop Local, the leading wedding registry platform for indie retailers, will announce the 2025 Best Wedding Gifts award winners this week.  The honor is presented to the top 100 retailers and top 100 brands in America.  

The top 100 brand finalists included Herend, Juliska, VIETRI, and Beatriz Ball.  The top 100 retail finalists were led by The Ivy House in Dallas, TX; Babcock Gifts in Memphis, TN; P.S. the Letter in Fort

Your Shop Local Store has a new feature: We've added a new award for the 2025 Best Wedding Gifts Finalists. 🥳

This finalist designation is awarded by Shop Local to the top 100 retailers and brands. It is based on 2024 online wedding registry sales from 1,450 retailers that use Shop Local's Online Store and Wedding Registry service who collectively sell 3,500 brands.

Insights 📊

• Of the top 20 brands, 90% are Syncing Brands.
• Of the top 100 brands, 58% are Syncing Brands.

With tariffs on people’s minds, indie stores need new levers to attract customers. 

Your Online Store has a built-in solution to entice new customers: a newsletter discount feature. 

How It Works

• You can turn it on and see the discount (coupon) amount you’ll offer   
• For example, you can offer 10% off when one signs up for your news.

Our Insight

• Many retailers and brands are already offering this newsletter discount.
• In our research, we found that 37%

In this example, we imagine 100 potential customers start on an online store's home page and wish to give a wedding gift online. On the store not using our software, 10 out of 100 customers will complete a gift-giving checkout. On the store using our software, 40 out of 100 customers will complete a gift-giving checkout—a 4x gain.

Details:

Indie Store Does Not Use Shop Local Gift Registry Service...

• 100 customers start on the retailer's home page —>
• 85 customers make it

We have updated the display of lifestyle images and home page slides in your Online Store.

Slide Ratio

• The new slide ratio is 2:1 (width to height).  Previously, the ratio was 3:1 (width to height)
• The recommended image dimensions are now 1620 pixels wide by 810 pixels high (previously 1954 pixels wide by 620 pixels high).

For step-by-step instructions on how to add, update, or view slides, please follow this help document:
https://www.shoplocal.org/help-center.

We're happy to see Casa Alegre, Orrefors , and Vista Alegre promote the Shop Local platform in Tableware Today's April/May 2025 issue.

• A brand displays our ShopLocal.org logo so that retailers reading the magazine know they can easily sell the products shown.
• When a brand offers our Syncing service, a retailer can instantly display the brand's entire product catalog online.
• The retailer's customers can buy the products and add them to gift registries.
• The retailer doesn

While at lunch, I sketched out a comparison between an indie store that doesn’t use Shop Local’s wedding registry software vs. an indie store that does. I show why a retailer using our software likely receives 400% more orders. Conversely, I believe a store not using our software is selling just 25% of what it could be. 

The reason our software produces more orders is that it retains more customers along the sales funnel—from finding the registrant’s gift list, to

We track the benefits of automation, and this human error caught my eye. An employee at Citigroup incorrectly typed in a refund amount, and it nearly cost the bank $81 trillion. The bank spotted this error and stopped it. The bank replied that it's adding more automation to its processes to avoid such mistakes.

While the stakes aren't as high for our indie stores, each day we see our 1,500 indie retailers manually entering product data into their POS and online stores.

The Wall St. Journal recently shared how Skechers has become a major shoe player by marching to its own drumbeat. 

Started in 1992, Skechers is the third largest seller of shoes in the world. But the company's history goes back even further: the founder's first company, LA Gear, which flamed out, was started in the 1980s.

Skechers grew by focusing on comfy and affordable shoes and didn't sign expensive promotion deals with active athletes. (It does partner with ex-

We are pleased to announce that J Dabbs Designs has joined Shop Local to grow its online registry business after being referred by sales rep Sonny Melder. Founded by owner Jenny Dabbs, J Dabbs Designs offers interior design services, gifts, bridal registry, large scale furnishings, and more. 

The store instantly received great benefits:

• Customers and registrants can shop 6k+ products online.
• The store avoids 9 weeks and $6,034 on 

The problem an indie store faces is it needs to juggle many software services, including these four:

• The software that runs their online store.
• The software that runs their online gift registry.
• The software that gets them product data. (They get the products’ pictures and prices from this service.)
• The software to placeholder wholesale orders. 
   

The above requires four different companies. Reasons? 

• No company makes an online store and wedding registry software

Your Shop Local Store has a new feature: We've added a new Benefits page to share the benefits and features of your registry service.

The Benefits page displays real statistics that are specific to your Online Store. These stats, like total number of registries serviced over the years and number of brands & products, help build trust—higher numbers better reflect your store's expertise and are more appealing to potential customers and new registry sign-ups.
 

The