Archive for the ‘Articles’ Category
Cover design: the mystery of the unopened catazine
September 3, 2010 Comment, MarketingThe Autumn 2010 Joules catalogue has been lying around in our house for over a week now. The trouble is, it’s still in its polywrap. Unopened.
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Video & e-commerce: time for the niche retailer to pay attention
August 21, 2010 Featured, MarketingThere’s no doubt that the web continues to evolve into an increasingly visual medium. Consumers like pictures, and they like video even more. So – as the technology continues to evolve at warp speed – maybe now’s the time for small business to sit up and pay attention? Video has the power to showcase products [...]
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Managing the loss of a key employee
April 5, 2010 ManagementDo your staff-related anxieties betray a lack of ‘readiness’? Ask a small business owner what worries them most in relation to staff or employment issues and one answer crops up again and again: how would I cope with the sudden loss of a key employee? Isn’t this a great metaphor for the ‘growing up’ of [...]
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Raising finance for your catalogue & e-commerce business
January 13, 2010 Featured, FundingThe theory goes that direct commerce is a cash-generative business. Our customers generally pay up front, and we in turn negotiate credit terms with our suppliers. So why is cash flow and funding so often cited by niche merchants as the factor that most inhibits their growth? No prizes for providing the answers. Most businesses [...]
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A course for ecommerce success
December 30, 2009 eCommerceMany niche multi-channel retailers don’t have an organisation big enough to support the in-house marketing expertise they need to grow their business at the pace they’d like. Often, the owner/manager will be working with limited resources, trying to navigate through an array of online tip-sheets and free advice to discover a strategy that’s effective, economical [...]
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Building a successful online brand with content
September 30, 2009 Featured, Marketing, eCommerceHow a retailer of adventure luggage attracts high-converting traffic with search-friendly content (and has a lot of fun in the process) When I met him in June at the Internet Retailer conference in Boston, he’d just spent a week on a 500-mile off-road expedition putting a brand new Land Rover LR3 through its paces in [...]
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A bluffer’s guide to incisive IT supplier evaluations
May 28, 2009 ManagementHow to cut through geek-speak to unmask a supplier’s viability. Ask the right question and a prospective technology supplier will reveal wonderfully useful information to help you in your evaluation. While merchant’s can feel intimidated by acronyms and jargon, you *can* talk tech about the product you’re thinking about buying. The secret is to ask [...]
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Funding & recovery
May 15, 2009 Consulting, Funding, InvestmentHaving been through a “recovery” myself, I understand the challenges faced by businesses in the multi-channel retail sector facing a distress situation. I’ve therefore assembled a consortium of investors willing to provide recovery finance, management input and board level advice to small and medium sized multi-channel retailers. If this is of interest to you, please [...]
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The ‘SEND’ button can be a fickle friend during a downturn
January 22, 2009 Featured, MarketingMeasure email ‘success’ with care or risk squandering your list When a merchant struggles to meet it’s sales plan, resisting the ‘send’ button on another email broadcast can be devilishly hard to do. Relatively fast and cheap compared to catalogues, where’s the harm with frequent email offers? Let’s explore the answer with one merchant’s true [...]
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Building an effective team in a growing business
January 22, 2009 Management“Your team is your greatest asset, and its overall value to your business is much greater than the cumulative value of the individuals within it.” The sentiment behind this well-worn maxim is one that is impossible to resist, and many owner-operators of growing catalogue businesses yearn for that “dream team” of sparky, committed and hard-working [...]
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