Top Strategies for Online Selling for Small and Medium Size Retailers

Keeping Up with Your Online Customers
How It Pays Off - Part 1

by George Kiorpelidis Jr

According to Sridhar Ramaswamy (Google’s SVP of Ads and Commerce) the way people shop is changing. Here’s a real world example. 

My wife was a freelancer working from home, going to the shopping center for a break in her day and doing a little shopping was fairly easy to do. Now she works for a large firm, has to commute downtown every day and the last thing she wants to do is be surrounded by people in a mall to wait in line to pay for something that took her 30 minutes of wandering around the store to find , sounds exhausting doesn't it.

What’s changed, now she takes that same 30 minutes while on the train and opens her email offers from her favorite online malls like Beyond the Rack and eLux and picks from the items that they believe she will like, and the boxes keep arriving at the house. She gets what she wants, the service is great and if she’s not happy all she does is put it back in the box and leave it outside the door for a return pick up.

More and more people are choosing to shop this way. According to the Financial Post, Canadian online retail sales at $18 Billion in 2010 are expected to rise to $32 billion by 2016. Companies like The Bay, Target and Home Depot are spending millions on their online marketing. How can a small retailer compete with this? It’s hard work but it's not complicated and I'll show you how.

Where to Start?

As savvy retailers know, service is the key to success. That's how we compete with the big players. We know our clientele and can quickly respond to their needs. Giving your customers what they want when they want it and how they want it.

In the past a customer came in off the street and a sales person had to learn what they wanted and then matched a product to those needs. Now customers usually know more than the salesperson and don't particularly want to spend a lot of time discussing it with them.

Step 1 

If you don't already have a website, get one. They are inexpensive and easy to find, your internet provider can probably host a site for you at little or no extra cost. If not check out GoDaddy or BlueHost they offer a very good service to price ratio.

Step 2

Create a shopping cart for your website. Now I know what you're thinking, who has time or a budget for that. We all know that retail is like the ocean, customers come in waves. Take advantage of slow periods and task an employee to add so many items per day on the website. In a few months it will all be done, the time will pass anyways so you may as well profit from it. No one knows your products and how to make them sound good to your customers better than you do, so get creative.

As for the costing factor, the two companies I mentioned above offer online shopping carts like OpenCart that are absolutely free! Now to be sure these free carts offer no support and few bells and whistles but they will put you products front and center for your customers to find. For more advanced online shopping carts I recommend BigCommerce or Volusion you can start for as little as $30 a month and they both offer top customer service and many attractive themes that you can use to give your online store a personality that matches your actual store.

Thanks for reading and I hope it inspires you to take action.

Come back next week when we will talk about how to learn what your customers want without having to ask them.

George is an experienced retailer and the marketing director of New World Collections, wholesale distributors servicing small and medium size retailers in Canada.

www.newworldcollections.ca

Introducing the David Rosales Designs line of jewelry!

In a large brown building just under the lip of the highway in Gallup, the David Rosales Design team are thriving in what was once a Coors beer distributorship. The flow of administrative, storage and work spaces was designed and laid out by David’s cousin and business partner John.

The workshops are clean and bright, the air clear, and under the hum and buzz of the machines and stone cutting tools, is an undercurrent of music; Navajo radio, oldies and top 40′s. Some of the 2 dozen or so artisans have an IPod or a cellphone on the bench by the stones they’re cutting, a bag of silver rings or bracelets they’re inlaying. Larimar, turquoise, coral, tiger’s eye, black jade and spiney oyster are transformed under their fingers from a dusty lump of rock to highly polished, intricately inlaid works of jewelry in demand from coast to coast. Elegant link bracelets, pendants with scenes of a mesa under the stars, lovely drop turquoise earrings are fashioned painstaking by a variety of artisans, each contributing his or her specialty to each piece. The results are finished works of art made by many hands.

In the center administrative space Arly and Charlene, Cynthia, David and John take orders, distribute jobs to the artisans, manage the stone and materials, and talk with customers. Everyone is busy. Creative juices are flowing, the work is piling up and David muses over his “drawing board”, a shelf littered with trinkets, designs, bits of stone and castings that prod his thoughts for new ideas. A new style, a color and stone combination, perhaps something in bronze or a cuff bracelet curved like a potato chip.

New World Collections is proud to be the exclusive distributor of the David Rosales Designs line of fine jewelry in Canada.

To learn more about the line and how you can carry it to sell in your jewelry or gift boutique please contact us at New World Collections http://www.newworldcollections.ca/contact/ 

Trying to boost sales? Sell toys online!

According to a recent report in the Globe & Mail the big online retailers are seeing increases in online toy sales. Amazon and Wal-Mart are going after Toys "R" Us by beefing up their offerings in the toy category.

So how can a small retailer compete with that?

As a niche player in your market you can take advantage of how well you know your customers, information like;

  - Asking parents about the kinds of toys they like.
  - Exposing them to local craftspeople or manufacturers.
  - Creating places for young people to have fun in you stores.
  - Giving parents a place to leave feedback (suggestion box/or by email).

Armed with this type of information you have an advantage the big box store can't match.

Given that Canadian online sales are growing at a rate of 14.2% a year you can't afford to take the kids for granted. They are your future customers and they will be shopping online more and more.

Take Action!

For more information on how you can take advantage of this trend and boost your sales contact us at http://www.newworldcollections.ca/contact/

We'll send you a free step by step guide on how to get started.

The mystery of Damascus steel blades.

The mystery of Damascus Steel

Damascus steel was a type of steel used in South Asian and Middle Eastern swordmaking. Damascus steel was created from wootz steel, a steel developed in India around 300 BC.[1] These swords are characterized by distinctive patterns of banding and mottling reminiscent of flowing water. Such blades were reputed to be tough, resistant to shattering and capable of being honed to a sharp, resilient edge.[2]

The reputation and history of Damascus steel has given rise to many legends, such as the ability to cut through a rifle barrel or to cut a hair falling across the blade,[5] but no evidence exists to support such claims. A research team in Germany published a report in 2006 revealing nanowires and carbon nanotubes in a blade forged from Damascus steel.[6] This finding was covered by National Geographic[7] and the New York Times.[8] Although modern steel outperforms these swords, microscopic chemical reactions in the production process may have made the blades extraordinary for their time. Woody biomass and leaves are known to have been used to carbonize the Wootz ingots used in Damascus steel, and research now shows that carbon nanotubes can be derived from plant fibers,[9] suggesting how the nanotubes were formed in the steel. Some experts expect to discover such nanotubes in more relics as they are analyzed more closely.[1][7] (source Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damascus_steel)

Modern Damascus

Today companies such as Silver Stag create Damascus steel by forge welding multiple layers of high carbon steels into a solid block called a billet, (Silver Stag contains 1095 & 15N20 high carbon tool steels). The billet is folded and re-welded several times to produce layers, (Silver Stag Damascus = 150 to 300 layers). Patterns are created by manipulating the steel during the forge welding process, (Silver Stag offers a random and twist pattern). The blades are profiled out of the layered steel billet block, then hand ground, polished, and sharpened. The combination of layered hard and soft steels creates blade flexibility, toughness, and produces invisible serrations on the edge that aid cutting. (source Silverstag http://www.silverstag.com )

New Pueblo Collection logo.

This is it we hope you like it. We know it`s not the logo or branding that makes a product great. It`s the hard work and dedication of the people behind it that does. We at New World Collections have striven for years to bring our customers the kind of products that they can be proud to own themselves and give to their friends and loved ones.

The Pueblo Collection brings together several families of silversmiths from the pueblos of New Mexico. It features the work of Hopi, Navajo and Zuni artists. This blog will feature these artists and tell their stories.

For more information visit us at www.newworldcollections.ca

New World Collections Silver Stag Video Contest.

New World Collections Silver Stag Video Contest!

So here's how it works. You send us videos of you using or reviewing a Silver Stag product, the one that gets the most likes will win the Silver Stag knife of their choice. Have fun and be safe!

Send video to: info@newworldcollections.ca

Rules: Your video must be suitable for all audiences and not violate any local, State or Provincial laws.

Disclaimer: New World Collections does not advocate cruelty against animals but recognizes the rights of responsible hunters and fishermen.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=exv6J0mUk5A

Our Mission

Hello and welcome to New World Collections (NWC)

At New World Collections our goal is to promote the art and craft industry in Canada. For nearly twenty years we have worked hard to locate and develop small and medium sized entrepreneurs who are dedicated to their craft. By introducing and promoting these craftspeople and their products to the marketplace we hope to ensure they remain a viable part of Canada’s economy.

The New World Collections website ( www.newworldcollections.ca ) is the culmination of nearly twenty years of work, bringing together small and medium sized craft companies with fine retailers and museums in Québec and Ontario.

Our goal is to continue this tradition of bringing quality craft products to market. By leveraging the internet we hope to extend our family of crafts people and offer even more services to our retail partners.

Come back often and sign into our contact us page for updates on new products and services as we will be introducing them regularly.

Thank you.