This idea comes from the Chickasaw Nation. Storytelling is an important part of Chickasaw culture, and who doesn’t love a good spooky story? Storytelling is an important part of many rural cultures, probably including yours. That makes this a great idea for any small town to adapt and use. In fact, why not start building your…
Last week, we talked about how big box retailers are getting smaller. Why is the big box retail sector making this expensive and difficult change to smaller stores? Because consumers have already started changing. Humorist David Sedaris summed up this consumer feeling in an interview. “I’d rather go to an actual shop — preferably a small…
“Everything gigantic in American [retail] is about to get smaller or die.” That’s the dramatic claim by contrarian economist James Kunstler,writing about the big retail sector in Business Insider. He says big retail is on the brink of scale implosion. Kunstler points to the same trends that are affecting small towns: online shopping, global delivery,…
Buy Local, or Bye-bye local! That’s a pretty clever tagline to use in your shop local efforts this holiday season. Thanks to Wendy Martin, from Havana, Illinois, who submitted it. (Wendy mentioned it came from a friend in Hickman, Kentucky.) Of course, a clever slogan isn’t enough. If you’re working on your Shop Local campaign…
There’s always plenty of holiday advice for retailers, including our 5 Retail Holiday Tips for 2014. We even talked about how service businesses can make themselves into holiday gifts. But what about the rest of us? Consultants, writers, manufacturers, engineers, farmers, and more all have businesses, but we aren’t necessarily retailers. What can non-retail…
With all the flood of tips for retailers to get ready for the holidays, what about other businesses? How can service-based businesses get ready for the holiday season? Next week, we’ll talk about other ways to be productive during the holidays, but this week, let’s focus on making more sales. Make your services into…
In any retail business, the last quarter of the year may beat the entire rest of the year for sales. That’s enough reason to to pay extra attention to getting ready to make the most of it. Here are five of my ideas on how to get more people through your doors in the…
Dean Abbott @DeanAbbott told me (on Twitter, of course) that he was thinking about how to drive engagement and draw a bigger audience on Twitter. I gave a few suggestions that might be helpful for you, too. Follow smart people. They are more interesting to engage with and easier to learn from. Watch for the…
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