Dak Prescott, quarterback of the Dallas Cowboys, recently received a $66 million signing bonus with his four-year contract.  While you will undoubtedly not be offering anything remotely close to that astronomic amount, it could be that a signing bonus would help your recruitment efforts in this tight market. Retail stores usually make a signing bonus… Read More

Those of us who were in business around 2008 remember the difficult years when the U.S. economy took a downturn now termed the Great Recession. According to the NBER (National Bureau of Economic Research), there have been ten recessions since World War II. The question that is on everyone’s mind is whether we’re heading for… Read More

What do tulip bulbs and toys have in common? They can both be promoted using a sales technique called a Dutch auction – named after a technique used to sell flowers in Holland.  Instead of starting low and bidding the price up, the price starts high and descends until someone accepts it. Here is an… Read More

I’m about to download a new app that has been recommended to me by several of my fellow business owners, and I invite you to come along.  Slack is a work management tool that allows you to coordinate communication and effort among employees or colleagues. I think it will work for our store’s management team… Read More

Sentences like this can make your head spin if you aren’t used to today’s marketing jargon: “Siloed UX approaches based on traditional channel mentality are preventing organizations from delivering a seamless digital customer user experience to internal and external audiences.”  But it’s always fun to learn something new, isn’t it? The term UX stands for… Read More

Janine Mulone, the owner of Feel Good Retail, introduces herself this way on her website: “For the last decade, I’ve supported indie retail entrepreneurs through moments of growth – new locations, going digital, testing physical, funding, building community and more. There is nothing I am more passionate about than helping retailers like you build strategies… Read More

The news has recently highlighted the fact that workers at some Apple stores and Starbucks locations are moving to unionize, an action that may come as a surprise to those of us who envy the benefits these retail giants are able to offer their associates. And while it’s unlikely that the employees at smaller independent… Read More

I’ve been charmed by this vintage postcard, which shows Lobster King Harry Hackney with his Lobster Waitresses in their prize-winning costumes for the Atlantic City Beauty Pageant Parade, ever since I wrote about using contests for window inspiration back in 2008.  As I said at the time, you can imagine the buzz in the kitchen as… Read More

A margin is usually defined as an edge or border, but in retailing the term has come to mean the difference between what you pay to acquire an item (also known as the Cost of Goods Sold, or COGS) and the price that you set to sell it to your customers. The difference between the… Read More

Social media platforms fluctuate in popularity, with Instagram and Facebook consistently showing up as top choices for independent retailers. But recently LinkedIn is getting a lot of buzz, which is perhaps a bit surprising for a program that is now almost 20 years old. During the past two decades it has primarily served as a… Read More