The goWholesale Blog

St. Patrick’s Day sales expected to be lower than last year

March 7th, 2008

According to the National Retail Federation’s 2008 St. Patrick’s Day Consumer Intentions and Actions survey, conducted by BIGresearch, consumers will spend an estimated $3.64 billion on St. Patrick’s Day, less than last year’s $3.76 billion.

Some are speculating the projected decline to be directly related to the fact that the holiday falls during the holy week before Easter this year. It could also be due to the looming recession which has consumers more wary about where they spend their dollars.

Regardless of the reason, if you are in the business of selling seasonal merchandise, you may want to consider some extra effort in your promotions in the coming week. Also, some cities are moving their official celebrations to March 14th to avoid any religious observance conflicts. Be prepared to take advantage of seeing this holiday celebrated more than once this year!

Posted in Generating More Sales | No Comments »

Ignorance is NOT Bliss…When it Comes to Product Defects

March 6th, 2008

Here’s some pretty important news straight from the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors. Usually the manufacturer is held liable for product defects but in some cases, the wholesaler can be held liable as well/instead.

Here are some of the specific circumstances where the wholesaler-distributer can be held liable:

Some wholesaler-distributors provide installation, service or repair work as a “value-added” for their customers, which may increase their product liability exposure in the process.

Wholesaler-distributors that modify, repackage or re-label products may assume a greater liability than those who don’t. Modification of the product can include any modification of instructions or warranties.

Repackaging under the wholesaler-distributor’s name may increase the exposure substantially.

The United States has some of the most stringent product safety standards in the world. When goods are produced overseas, they do not necessarily comply with these standards. When a wholesaler-distributor imports products from a foreign manufacturer who does not carry U.S. product liability coverage, they can assume the product liability exposure.

If the manufacturer is insolvent or otherwise unavailable (foreign manufacturers with no coverage inside the U.S. for example) the wholesaler-distributor can be held liable for any defect in the product.

When the wholesaler-distributor is directly responsible for the defective condition, i.e. if they have damaged the product while repackaging, or by making product modifications, they may be held liable for product liability.

If a wholesaler-distributor had knowledge of the defective condition prior to the sale and did nothing, they can be held accountable.

If a wholesaler-distributor recommended an unsuitable product for the job they may be liable

Be sure you are aware of any instances where you could be held liable for the wholesale products you sell. Any lawyer will tell you that “ignorance is no defense.”

Posted in Product Sourcing | No Comments »

Mobile Billboards

March 5th, 2008

I’m sure you’ve seen them, but have you thought about actually using them?

As with anything in America these days, this type of advertising comes with options.

1. The standard billboard - This consists of your advertisement being displayed on a rotating basis between an average of 8 other messages.

2. The digital billboard - This one, like the one pictured above, consists of 6 high definition screens that can be seen day or night. You also have the option of using the 6 screens individually as well as a whole.

3. The billboard with display - This truck features either the standard scrolling or digital advertisements along the sides while in transit, but once it reaches its destination, the sides pull up and reveal a physical display of your products like in the picture below.

The general price for mobile billboards is around $4,000 for a 4 week period. Be sure to check around though as prices will probably vary by company and region.

Many times when companies devise their advertising campaigns they focus their efforts primarily around print, television and online advertising, which is very important but it’s not the only way to reach your target audience. Moblie billboards not only reach a massive audience of commuters stuck in traffic (think about how much time you yourself spend in the car!) but also is an easy way to bring your company to the attention of people attending sporting events, conventions, concerts–you name it.

Also, remember to think outside the usual advertising box and consider advertising options such as park benches, train and bus stops (or even inside the trains or on the buses), phone kiosks, taxi tops, digital projections on the side of buildings…in the world of advertising, there’s almost nothing off limits so get creative!

Posted in Marketing Your Business | No Comments »

6 SEO tactics to avoid

March 4th, 2008

Any business with a website wants theirs to pop up when people search for their product. Wanting this to happen is one thing, while achieving it is very much another. Success usually comes from diligent and patient SEO efforts but some web owners get a little antsy and decide they want results NOW.

This is not a good idea. If you want immediate results it’s likely you’ll have to ‘trick’ the search engines into thinking your website is the best (which it very well may be) but let me let you in on a little secret….search engines don’t take to kindly to being fooled. The result can be banishment from the search engine which will effectively crush your online dreams.

So here are 6 tactics that search engines like Google, Yahoo! and MSN regard as ’shady’ and will penalize you for using (courtesy MarketingProfs.com).

1. Link Farms - There’s general consensus that one of the strongest influences on search rankings is the number and quality of inbound links to a Web page. A link farm is a group of Web sites created for the primary purpose of creating a high number of links to a given Web site. These links are not “real” (in terms of signaling the quality of the site they link to), and so they are trying distort search engine results.

2. Automated Content/Duplication - Search engines like content. They particularly like frequently updated content. Unfortunately, creating unique content takes time and energy. To try to trigger search engine spiders to index more pages from a Web site, and do so more frequently, some may try to auto-generate content or scrape Web content from other sites and republish it.

This technique often goes hand in hand with link farms (because if you’re creating thousands of sites, you need some content to put on them in order to get the search engines to index them and for the links to matter).

Google has gotten very good at determining what is “natural” content vs. content that is computer-generated gibberish with no value. As for duplicating content on other Web sites without permission, this is often in violation of copyright laws, and it’s unethical.

3. Keyword Stuffing - This involves over-populating certain portions of a Web page with repeated occurrences of a given keyword in the hopes of influencing search engine results. Search engines caught on to this trick many years ago, yet it remains popular for some reason.

4. Cloaking - This practice involves delivering different Web site content to the search engine spiders than is delivered to human users. The usual motivation for this is to send the search engine crawlers content for ranking on a certain term—but to send different content to real users. It’s pretty easy for the search engines to detect this. If you’re suspected of using cloaking, it’s easy for someone (like a Google employee) to simply visit your Web site as a human and check whether you’re cloaking. This technique, when discovered, is one of the most reliable ways to get a site banned.

5. Hidden Text - This technique “hides” text on the Web page that search spiders will index (for ranking purposes), but is invisible to a human. The simplest example is some variation of white text on a white background.

Based on how sophisticated you want to get, it could be based on something as simple as tags in the HTML, CSS stylings or Javascript that changes the page dynamically. Regardless of how sophisticated the approach, it is still going to be detected at some point.

6. Doorway/Gateway Pages - This practice is similar to the cloaking technique. Instead of dynamically delivering different content to spiders, a doorway page involves getting a given page (the “doorway page”) to rank well in the search engines, but then redirecting human users to a different page. Clearly, this is not in the interests of end-users as they don’t get the content they would have expected.

For more information on the right way to build links please read “Link Building Tips for Beginners“

Posted in E-Commerce and E-Business | No Comments »

Boss skills

March 3rd, 2008

According to a survey conducted by Yahoo!HotJobs here are the top 10 qualities employees consider necessary for being a good boss:

(in order of importance)

1. Communication/listening skills.
2. Effective leadership skills.
3. Trust in their employees to do their job well.
4. Flexibility and understanding.
5. Intelligence.
6. Teamwork skills and even temperament (tie).
7. Interest in employee development.
8. Ability to share credit.
9. Successful in finding and retaining new talent.
10. Presentation skills.

So if you are looking to cut down on employee turnover consider these things for yourself as a boss and also as qualities to look for when you are hiring for potential managers. Happy workers = happy business.

Posted in Hiring and Human Resources | No Comments »

Next Entries »

The goWholesale Blog

St. Patrick’s Day sales expected to be lower than last year

Ignorance is NOT Bliss…When it Comes to Product Defects

Mobile Billboards

6 SEO tactics to avoid

Boss skills

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