The pandemic has brought home a fact that many of us already knew – the majority of independent retailers (employees and owners alike) do not have access to the type of paid family and medical leave common in many European countries. This means that someone with a serious illness may not be able to afford… Read More

I wrote about the idea of Buy Online, Pickup in Store pre-pandemic, when this concept didn’t have much practical appeal for the majority of independent retailers. Brick and mortar stores just weren’t set up to have customers make a purchase on their website and then come in the store to pick it up.  But many… Read More

We are all ready for a return to robust in-person shopping – but the most recent news about the Delta variant of the COVID-19 virus is making it doubtful that we’ve beaten the pandemic yet. According the George Anderson on RetailWire, “while the Delta variant hasn’t resulted in any mass shifts in shopping behavior at… Read More

The TikTok social media platform has been around since 2016, but it really seems to have come into its own during the pandemic. There are now some 800 million users worldwide who spend an average of almost an hour a day creating or watching TikTok’s 15 second self-made music videos (BusinessofApps).  TikTok is now the… Read More

First came SaaS, which stands for software-as-a-service, which allows companies to use software made available by a provider via the cloud. You may have already been using this type of platform for email marketing, bookkeeping, payroll processing, or database management.   The concept of RaaS, or retail-as-a-service, may be a little more challenging to grasp.… Read More

The competition among e-commerce wholesale platforms is heating up – and no wonder, with the growth rate of B2B sales online predicted to reach a double-digit figure in trillions of dollars in 2024.  These sites are changing the way some buying is done in our industry, posing a threat to sales agencies, trade shows, permanent marts and… Read More

We are so ready to say goodbye to the pandemic, and predictions are that this fall will see a resurgence of sales for brick and mortar retail. The public is eager for in-person experiences, and communities are embracing the concept of buying local to help their businesses recover. The cloud on the horizon, however, is… Read More

The end of 2019 would have been a challenging time to open a retail store, but it turns out that it wasn’t such a bad time to launch a new “digital trade show” e-commerce company.  Trada was initially only active in Australia, starting out with 40 Australian brands and 100 Australian retailers, but last month… Read More

A recent poll of our neighboring businesses revealed that only half of us are back to our pre-pandemic hours.  Our shop is one of several still closed at least one day a week, and we aren’t open any evenings yet.  Prior to COVID, we were open every day, and four to five evenings until 8:00.… Read More

Walmart has recently debuted a smartphone app for its associates, and according to an AP wire story the company has pledged to give more than 740,000 store workers a new Samsung phone for free by the end fo the year. The company has stated that their goal is to make the workers’ jobs easier, and… Read More