Archive for March, 2009

Monday, March 30th, 2009

Web Summit 2.0

April 24 in High Point | REGISTER HERE

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If you’re in the home furnishings industry, you are fighting against:

o Increasing expenses

o Decreasing revenues

Being online is the solution to both problems.

We’ve broken online marketing down to its basic fundamentals will transfer that know-how in just three hours of teaching and an hour of interactive discussion. Once you understand the fundamentals, creating an Internet presence capable of boosting your bottom line becomes a paint-by-numbers process.

On April 24, 2009, home furnishings retailers, manufacturers, representatives and suppliers will gather at the Industry-Wide Web Summit 2.0 in High Point, NC to learn the bottom-line, real-world methods of making the web work for their retail businesses. Will you be one of them?

1:45 Intro | Mary Frye @ HFIA

2:00 Converting Online Leads into In-Store Sales | Andy Bernstein @ FurnitureDealer.net

3:00 The Role of Social Media | Leslie Carothers @ The Kaleidoscope Partnership

4:00 The Modern World of Customer Relations | Chris Millet @ PROFITconsulting

5:00 Expert Panel Discussion | Rick Doran @ R&A Marketing, David Lively @ The Lively Merchant

All segments of the home furnishings industry are invited to learn how to improve their business through online marketing. The agenda is filled with valuable content that guarantees you will not be disappointed in what you hear.

Seating is limited. Registration is required for this free event.

Click here to register: please provide your name, company and telephone number.

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Sunday, March 29th, 2009

Profit Margin: Turnaround Tips

Turning around a struggling business in these difficult economic times isn’t easy, but it’s possible. Wayne Rivers, the co-founder of the Family Business Institute, has some advice on how to make your business more lucrative than ever before. (MSNBC)

Look for announcements in the furniture industry press later this week about an exciting new partnership between The Lively Merchant and the Family Business Institute.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

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Friday, March 27th, 2009

Ms. Jones does not want to play Hide & Seek

“She’s out there and she’s looking for you. This is not the time to play hide and seek.”

So says Ray Allegrezza, Editor-In-Chief of FurnitureToday, in a recent editorial. “It’s always a good thing to be connected to your customers — current and potential. But in this current economic climate, being disconnected from your customer is not just risky business, it can be deadly business.”

We couldn’t agree more, as we said loudly (or, in my case, hoarsely) during the E-Commerce Strategy webinar we conducted this week with our partner, PROFITconsulting:

Complete audio presentation

Complete PowerPoint

PowerPoint Presentation in .PDF

Give me a call if you want to analyze your web strategy (or create it) or contact Wayne McMahon at wayne@profitsystems.com or 719-332-9824 to see what PROFITsystems’ e-Marketing can do for you.

Incidentally, Allegrezza quoted a study by Nielsen Online, whose Claritas market segmentation is the basis for the Meet Ms. Jones™ personification we use to help you give the right message using the right media to the right customer – online, offline and in-store.

Your back yard is a whole lot bigger than it used to be. Make sure Ms. Jones can find you.

Posted in About Retail, Communication, Family Business | Leave Comment

Thursday, March 26th, 2009

One more reason our Tell Ms. Jones™ email marketing is better than the rest…

… no male strippers!

Check out the paid ad FeedBlitz, another email marketer, inserted at the end of this email I received today.

Tell Ms. Jones™ is different in a lot of ways, one of them being that we will never humiliate you or infuriate your customer with ads for “daytime shock-value strip tease” – or anything else, for that matter. These “ad-funded” emails can cost less – but really, what price would you pay to avoid this?

Tell Ms. Jones™ is only $100 each time you send an email to your entire mailing list, no matter how many names. Our customers report that it yields the highest rate of return on any of their marketing.

Alas, no strippergrams. Sorry.

Posted in About Retail, Communication, Products | Leave Comment

Monday, March 23rd, 2009

“Can’t act. Slightly bald. Can dance only a little.”

Good thing Fred Astaire paid no attention to MGM’s review of his screen test.

Beethoven’s violin teacher declared him hopeless as a composer, while Einstein’s teacher wrote that he “would never be able to do anything that would make any sense in this life.” Walt Disney was fired by a newspaper for lacking ideas.

How many of you could share a story – either personal in nature or well known in your family – of how certain failure actually turned into real success. Can you share a dead end that lead to one of the better times in your life?

I don’t want to be like one of those naysayers who tried to squash a genius, but I have to disagree with a blowhard professor from Wharton who predicts the end of advertising because of the internet. You can read his entire point of view here.

To me this an opinion whose time has not yet come. Failing newspapers and declining radio revenue are examples of changes in media usage. But the death of standard push media is greatly exaggerated.

Time will tell. Don’t let new age ideas that are ahead of their usefulness affect your bottom-line. Invest in the future at a manageable pace. Make sure the people who are advising you have a real world understanding of your challenges. A book full of words and a brain full of academia rarely produce outcomes that produce jobs for employees, sales to customers, or profits to pay your bills.

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Monday, March 16th, 2009

Bridge Jumping, Part II {still true}

THE NEW YORK TIMES, SEPTEMBER 8, 1895 – Mrs. Clara McArthur of 167 [sic] East One Hundred and Twenty-seventh Street, the young woman who attempted to jump from the Brooklyn Bridge ten days ago, but was prevented from doing so by the police, dropped off quietly in the darkness at 3:30 o’clock yesterday morning, and she is now in the Hudson Street Hospital, a prisoner, charged with attempted suicide. Although when she was picked up she was unconscious, she had apparently entirely recovered from the effects of her daring feat by 7 o’clock A.M.

The latest bridge jumper seems to have been moved to the feat not so much by desire for notoriety as by her wish to earn a living for her husband who is a railroad man out of work, and her five year old child. The man has been without work for some time, and the family has been living in poverty. Mrs. McArthur had been told how easily she could earn $100 a week by jumping from the bridge, and afterward appearing in a dime museum.

Mrs. McArthur was driven to the bridge in a furniture van…

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I swear, I did not make that last part up.

Clara survived, but I was unable to find out if she made her fortune and saved her family by appearing at dime museums like Barnum’s and Ripley’s. I hope she did.

I hope you do, too. Sometimes you have to get a little crazy to get ahead.

Posted in About Retail, Communication, Family Business, Retail Idioms | Leave Comment

Friday, March 13th, 2009

Bridge Jumping {a true story}

THE NEW YORK TIMES, AUGUST 31, 1895 – Mrs. Clara McArthur of 162 East One Hundred and Twenty-seventh Street attempted to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge at 5:30 o’clock yesterday morning, but was prevented by the bridge policemen…

“I made up my mind long ago to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge. My husband read to me from a newspaper last Winter about someone who made the leap. I said, ‘Why, that is nothing at all, I can do that myself.’

“I went down this morning, fully intending to jump. I was not the least bit nervous. My husband has done all the fretting. In fact, he is about worn out with anxiety. I put on, before leaving home, a suit of yellow and black tights and over them a close-fitting dress that I was going to leave in the carriage. I had my shoes weighted with sand. I cannot swim but there was no danger of my drowning, because I wore a new kind of life preserver that has little balloons that fit under the arms. I had around my neck a little silk American flag. I was going to hold my hands high above my head and just step off.”

Mrs. McArthur is rather tall. She has dark eyes and hair. She speaks intelligently except on the subject of bridge-jumping.

“It was not my fault.” Mr. McArthur said. “My wife has a talent for bridge-jumping. She has not had any actual experience, but she has the right idea.”

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Draped in good intentions and the American flag, Mrs. McArthur had a good plan for a bad idea. It was a perfectly executed disaster.

Can you relate?

Posted in About Retail, Communication, Family Business, Retail Idioms | Leave Comment

Tuesday, March 10th, 2009

Digital Nomads

Hugh MacLeod said, “The old ways are dead. And you need people around you who concur. That means hanging out more with the creative people, the freaks, the real visionaries, than you’re already doing. Thinking more about what their needs are, and responding accordingly. Avoid the dullards; avoid the folk who play it safe. They can’t help you anymore. Their stability model no longer offers that much stability. They are extinct, they are extinction.” How To Be Creative