There are actually entire courses on the subject of retail math (and you can take a short one for free online). But what I find most fascinating is the mix of psychology and mathematics that goes into setting prices. Many special offers take advantage of the fact that most of us aren’t very good at… Read More

“The Beanie craze was a lifeline…to mom-and-pop retailers who were struggling the late 1990s”, according to Zac Bissonnette in his recent book entitled The Great Beanie Baby Bubble: Mass Delusion and the Dark Side of Cute (Portfolio/Penguin, 2015).  Our shop was among the thousands who benefited from Ty Warner’s decision to only sell Beanie Babies… Read More

Thanks to American Express, the concept of Small Business Saturday on Thanksgiving weekend is getting to be as well known as Black Friday and Cyber Monday. And although one of the main purposes of SSS is to encourage consumers to use American Express cards — and to have more small businesses accept them — this… Read More

“Overtime” refers to the requirement that workers be paid at the rate of one and a half times their regular pay rate for time worked over 40 hours in a 7 day period. This practice, commonly referred to as “time and a half”, is a federal regulation administered by the Department of Labor. However all employees… Read More

Sometimes it seems that we spend more time thinking about social media than about the buying and selling that are the basic activities of retailing. But in a recent blog and video for museums and cultural centers, Colleen Dilenschneider argues that “content is not king” (quoting Bill Gates) — connectivity is also key. In the… Read More

Facebook, Yelp and many other sites allow consumers to give instant feedback when they are pleased — or displeased — with a retail experience.  Happily we are not impacted as much as restaurants, who can flourish or perish based on online comments. But it is still important that we pay attention to what potential customers will… Read More

In a recent interview in an article by Randy Tucker about the benefits of working part-time, AJ Ferguson of the nonprofit UpDayton said that working less than full time allows him to “play in some other sandboxes.”  I love that image, because it can be used to describe almost any other activity — school, parenting,… Read More

We noticed the inviting “Buzz Point” sign at a downtown Madison retailer while Christmas shopping last December, and made a note to find out more about this program. We discovered that in our community, Buzz Points is offered by locally owned Park Bank. It serves as a way for the bank to promote the use… Read More

Walking down the street and popping in to explore a locally owned shop is one of the great pleasures of visiting a town or city.  It remains to be seen whether doing so virtually via Google Street View — without leaving the comfort of your easy chair — is as rewarding, and whether this new… Read More

It turns out that too much wool is not a good thing, whether you’re a knitting store or an Australian sheep. Chris is a renegade Merino sheep who apparently got separated from his flock in Canberra and missed his regular appointments with the shearer. Although he evaded capture several times, he was finally sedated and… Read More