What’s ahead for the Christmas season? The National Retail Federation was quoted in a recent Women’s Wear Daily article as predicting that 2025 holiday retail sales will grow between 3.7 and 4.2 percent over last year’s levels. This sounds like good news, but the picture may not actually be that bright. Price increases, especially those… Read More

An update of a popular blog post from March 19, 2018 It’s been over a year since Canva congratulated me on having completed 1,500 designs. I can’t imagine how many I’ve done since then – including the graphics that accompany many of these blog posts. But I wanted to revisit all the ways that this… Read More

When Peter Pan and the Lost Boys sang “I Won’t Grow Up” on Broadway in 1954, there was a new word just starting to make the rounds: kidult. While this term originally applied to adults who enjoyed TV programs aimed at children, it is used 70 years later to describe the gift industry trend of… Read More

An update of a popular blog post from December 23, 2013 “The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior” is a popular mantra in the psychology world. Whether it is true that you can predict an individual’s future actions based on their past may be debatable. But in business, the buying patterns of our… Read More

The U.S. Treasuring Department recently placed its last order for the metal discs used to make pennies, which means that the smallest American coin will cease production early next year. Already a gas station chain near us in Wisconsin has announced that it will no longer accept or require coins less than 5¢ in value.… Read More

An update of a popular blog post from June 2, 2014 Most of us look to importers and manufacturers for readymade goods for our stores, perhaps also occasionally buying from a local maker who sells goods at wholesale.  But it can be fun to be in on the ground floor, helping someone take an idea… Read More

Your days in the shop may pass slowly, but the months fly by – before you know it, the next holiday, the next season, the next year is here. Maybe you meant to have your window displays planned in advance, or to increase your presence on social media, or to hire extra sales staff in… Read More

An update of a popular blog post from November, 2010 A lot has changed since I first noticed text alerts, or mobile offers, while shopping in a Copenhagen department store many years ago. The sign said that shoppers could find a special SMS offer on glassware using their mobile phone.  I didn’t even know at… Read More

At the end of August, 2025, the U.S. ended the de minimis exemption. That would appear to be a good thing for independent retailers, but there are of course two sides to every issue. The de minimis exemption allowed most goods to enter the U.S. without tariffs, duties, or full customs formalities if the shipment… Read More

An update of a popular blog post from December, 2010 When I first wrote about stores gift wrapping customers’ purchases, it was a service commonly offered by department stores. But by 2016, as an article in Marketplace stated, “Free department store gift wrapping services are a thing of the past as stores compete with each… Read More