An update of a popular blog post from December 13, 2010 The customer may always be right (or not), but the customer is not always cheerful.  One of the day-to-day challenges facing store owners and our employees is how to deal with a surly shopper.  Here are five techniques I hope you’ll find helpful: 1.… Read More

Why is it important to work with a variety of vendors, and to carry merchandise sourced from different countries? Recent issues with tariffs, shipping, and supply chain issues have shown how difficult it can be when one country of origin or vendor becomes unreliable or more expensive. Diversity also builds strength in your product mix,… Read More

An update of a popular blog post from November 13, 2017 My favorite subject back in first grade was called show and tell.  This grade school version of Toastmasters encouraged even the shyest children to get up and talk about something they’d brought from home.  Perhaps it was the future retailer in me that made… Read More

One of the most common questions new retailers ask is “do I need a POS system, and if so which one is best for my store?” Veteran shopkeepers who have been using cash registers instead of the more modern point of sale systems are faced with similar questions when considering the efficiency of converting. Both… Read More

An update of a popular blog post from October 12, 2010 We all hope we never have to face a medical crisis in our business, but of course things do sometimes happen.  Beyond keeping a supply of bandaids on hand, what have you done to make sure you’re ready in case something happens to a… Read More

No one expects you to greet customers in all of the world’s 7,000 languages. But it would be simple to learn a few signs to make deaf customers using American Sign Language feel welcome. The easy ASL sign for thank you, for example, is shown in the illustration above. “By implementing strategies focused on equal… Read More

An update of a popular blog post from July 15, 2019 Next year will mark the 25th anniversary of  Independent Retailer Month, which was started In 2003 as National Independent Retailer Week. Tom Shay, principal of Profits Plus Solutions, wanted to encourage retailers to create celebrations for their communities, industries and own businesses.  Now is… Read More

There’s a new weekly retail roundup newsletter available to you for free – and its name is a clever play on the shopkeeping term SKU (a stock keeping unit, i.e. a single item of inventory). The SKUPE, which is pronounced scoop, is a recent product of the British-American media and marketing company MVF.  As their… Read More

We’re all dreaming of getting a refund on the tariffs we paid over the past year now that the Supreme Court has ruled that the recent tariffs – which wreaked havoc with our industry – were unconstitutional. The government has established an online portal called CAPE (Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries) to process refunds,… Read More

An update of a popular blog post from June 23, 2009 Things have changed, and mostly not for the better, since I wrote about the world of organized crime against retail stores 15 years ago. At that time Stores magazine (the monthly publication of the National Retail Federation) had reported that ORC, or Organized Retail… Read More