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Jason Solarek @ Bridge 5 days ago • Feb. 9, 2025 • 3:41 PM
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Jason Solarek @ Bridge 5 days ago • Feb. 9, 2025 • 3:41 PM

Great news: We've made a free poster for your indie store for Valentine's Day. This poster will help you get more wedding registries. February is the second most popular month (after January) for brides to open a wedding registry. Now is your month!

This poster can also be printed smaller and be a flyer. You can place this in an upright display.

You can customize the template by placing your website address and QR code on it.

Please find the poster template attached. You

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Jason Solarek @ Bridge Yesterday • 3:59 PM
How Shop Local is helping your store gain new wedding registries through text messages
Jason Solarek picture
Jason Solarek @ Bridge Yesterday • 3:59 PM
How Shop Local is helping your store gain new wedding registries through text messages

We’re helping our indie stores get new wedding registries. We’re sending SMS text messages to past customers and registrants encouraging them to promote the retailer’s wedding registry service. 

Details: 

1. We’re sending this text message to customers that bought off a registry list in 2024:

….

Hi [gift giver's first name],

Thank you for buying a beautiful wedding gift for [registrant name] & [co-registrant name]. They loved it.

💘 Valentine’s Day is coming up.

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Jason Solarek @ Bridge 5 days ago • Feb. 9, 2025 • 1:03 PM

Last week, I wrote about the desire for Big Retail (i.e. Amazon, Walmart, and other large retailers)  to automate all parts of their supply chain. This weekend’s The Wall St. Journal shares that Amazon will spend about $105b on AI this year.  (Alphabet will spend $75b and Meta $65b.)

AI is an automation tool.  Indie stores will be expected to offer many of these tools because Big Retail does. But, as the article notes, these tools are very expensive and

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Jason Solarek @ Bridge 5 days ago • Feb. 9, 2025 • 12:43 PM
How materials from Shop Local can speed up marketing and reduce costs for indie stores
Jason Solarek picture
Jason Solarek @ Bridge 5 days ago • Feb. 9, 2025 • 12:43 PM
How materials from Shop Local can speed up marketing and reduce costs for indie stores

Austin Kleon, the author and creativity guru, offers these four posters for free.  This inspired me to wonder if Shop Local couid offer free posters to our 1,470 indie stores. Indie stores need marketing materials, yet often lack the resources to create them. 

The posters could even be printed small as flyers and put in upright displays.  

We already offer free marketing materials to members. We offer two flyers: a review flyer and a wedding registry flyer.

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Jason Solarek @ Bridge 8 days ago • Feb. 6, 2025 • 2:48 PM
The Journal reports on this wholesale mall’s role in importing cheap goods directly to shopper’s doorsteps in the U.S.
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Jason Solarek @ Bridge 8 days ago • Feb. 6, 2025 • 8:47 AM
My street in the East Village: an Amazon truck cordons off part of the street to deliver packages. Every day they turn the street into a mini-distribution warehouse. Many of the packages are shipped directly from China and were not inspected. They didn’t pay customs taxes because of the de minimis exemption. The indie stores in the background have a hard time competing with Amazon’s tax-free warehouse on their doorstep.

The Wall St. Journal editorial board shared yesterday that inspecting an international package going through customs costs us taxpayers about $5. In 2016, President Obama raised the duty-free limit from $200 to $800 so our customs agents could inspect fewer packages.  I feel this change was a gift to the customs agents—but bad for citizens and indie shops.

Here’s why:  
First, it allowed a lot more shipments with drugs to enter the U.S. A 2021 study found 24,000

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Jason Solarek @ Bridge 9 days ago • Feb. 5, 2025 • 9:27 AM
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Jason Solarek @ Bridge 9 days ago • Feb. 5, 2025 • 9:27 AM

The New York Times gives an update on the executive branch suspending the de minimis rules for China shipments and adding a 10% tariff on Chinese goods. 

Excerpt: 

“Lower-value parcels from China, which previously were tariff-free, now face not only the 10 percent tariff but also the many complex tariffs on every category of goods that these shipments previously skirted entirely.”


I believe these new rules will help our indie stores and many others. I think goods

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Jason Solarek @ Bridge 12 days ago • Feb. 2, 2025 • 1:53 PM
How companies explain complicated offerings with simple graphics and charts
Jason Solarek picture
Jason Solarek @ Bridge 12 days ago • Feb. 2, 2025 • 1:53 PM
How companies explain complicated offerings with simple graphics and charts

While at Best Buy to buy a Philips Hue light strip, I did some quick research on how product makers and digital service providers explain their benefits and pricing.  

See Best Buys membership program here: 
https://www.bestbuy.com/site/best-buy-membership/best-buy-membership-total/pcmcat1629315977983.c?id=pcmcat1629315977983

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