From a Reader...
My wife is from (overseas) and if you have ever been there you would know that there are some very good import/export possibilities. We are very interested in importing some specific nitch products and selling them on the internet.
I went ahead and ordered your book "How Small Business Trades Worldwide" and will have read it by the time that I start your class next month. I do have a couple questions that I have had come to mind since I started your book a couple days ago. First, why haven't you updated your book? Or if you have where can I find it? I notice the copyright date is 2001, surely in 10 years time things have changed greatly and is worthy of updating the information. One thing in particular is the expansion and ease of ecommerce. On page 18 of your book you state that "a business that is only web based is proving near impossible", have you changed your stance on ecommerce?
Reply:
We cannot know if there are good import/export possibilities until we test them in the market, which is one of the first things we do... our opinions are mere hypotheses to test... we never risk bringing in something until we have proven the demand with orders from customers first...
Saturday, March 12, 2011
Web Based Business Proving Near Impossible
Copyright dates don't change, it is the date upon which the clock starts ticking and the copyright begins to expire, so the book will always be copyright 2001. If one could simply update a copyright forever, then copyrights would never expire. The law is designed to assure copyrights do expire.
I have made plenty of minor changes to the book over the years, and as a small business start-up the point "a business that is only web based is proving near impossible" is as true today as it was in 2001, even more so since we have a decade of experience to back it up. Of course if you can amass a few billion in advance, you can create another amazon, I suppose, but we are talking about a business start-up, which for most people means little or no assets to begin.
I understand there are many young people who did not know the world before the internet, and plenty who wish it to be true that it is a likely success to open a web-based business, the opposite of what my book says. It just is not true. If you have a plan that is web-based and has worked, I'd love to hear about it and show others. A decade later I am still waiting to see a single viable example (and I mean make a living at it, since for the same time and effort, one can make a living otherwise). What makes the web unviable for the small business is the cost of customer acquisition is too high. Read David Ogilvy on Advertising, a book from the 1960s, which is as relevant today as it was then regarding the difference between impressions vs. sales.
The web has been a major benefit in lowering the cost of research and communication. That is no small thing, but beyond that, the web is perhaps no more than 4 or 5% of sales. Or in other words, 95% of sales does not take place on the web. It is important to go where 95% of your customers are. And if there is any internet-based business to be done, then sell to internet retailers, do not maintain your own internet store. But then in the 1970s, when mail order catalog business exploded up to 3 or 4 % of sales, that was the lesson then too. I sell TO amazon.com, but not "on" amazon.com. They are just another retailer.
One thing we do in business is make people prove claims, we test our own hypotheses. Often claims about the 'net are sheer nonsense. I was one of the first people to ever deliver a course on the internet, and certainly the first to do so in a financially viable manner (most of the competitors from 1990 - 2000 are gone). I've integrated the web into my business only to the extent it is beneficial to my customers and business. I am constantly leaning on google adwords, seo mavens, and anyone else who claims there are cost/benefits to be enjoyed. I tested the claims that one can join the rich working 4 hours a week. If and when the time comes that a business that is only web based is proving viable, then I will be one of the first to know about it, and will share the info. In the meantime, I am not going to suggest anything I know to be not true.
What I do offer in the class is the hard-core steps to establishing a viable business, and avoiding the common mistakes that wreck novices to the field. There is nothing to keep you from establishing a website and putting the niche products up for sale, and testing your hypothesis. Quickly you would prove you would false. Then what? Then you could do what I lay out in my class, and find a viable business trading with any given country.
Friday, March 11, 2011
Conversation on Testing New Product Ideas
On Mar 10, 2011, at 2:47 PM, S wrote:
Actually, I'm wondering how many times you can go into the same store to gather information on different, new products, not how many times you can for one product. For example, I'm guessing if you go into a store to gather info on a product after you were in that same store last month gathering info on another, different product, they'll be on to you and know you're an importer not a customer. Is the idea that after the first time you've been through the process with a store, you've established somewhat of a relationship so next time you have a product to gather info on you go ahead and present yourself to that store as an importer? Or is the expectation that after the first interaction with a store you obtain the name of the store's manufacturer's rep, establish a relationship with that rep, and from then on ask the rep to gather the feedback?
***Initial contact is for the initial product... with the initial product, if you find it exists, that will be rpetty quick, so you would be unmemorable. If it is unexciting, you would not be visiting more than once, and thus unmemorable...
if you were to go the full “six times six” it would be because you are working on something very good... and once this ws launched, your best bet on what is next would be via the customers you actually, at that point, sell to...
If you kept coming back over and over and getting no where, it would be a problem in eiher listening or executing designs... and then you would have the challenge of learning which problem it was, and gorwing out of it... (business is all about human potential)***
Also, I'm guessing you'd want to go to a regular mainline retailer rather than a conservator to gather product feedback, because the chances of getting a clerk who specializes in and therefore receives feedback about a specific product at a regular mainline retail store is greater than the chances of finding such a clerk at a conservator store, right?
***Correct, we have no business in the mass merchandiser, conservator store...***
Regarding question #3, below, I think I'm having some difficulty identifying some regular mainline retail/specialty stores from conservator stores. It seems like conservators and regular mainline retail/specialty stores both have "chain" stores. Some stores are easy for me to identify as conservators: Target, Fred Meyers, Walmart, K-Mart, and Costco. But others, because they are also "chain" stores, are more difficult for me to determine whether they are conservators or regular mainline retail/specialty stores (I'm using both these terms separated by the "slash" to refer to the same thing – the stores I, as an innovator, WILL target as my buyers) like: Hobby Lobby, Michael's, Z-Gallerie (Although it's growing, Z Gallerie is privately held, so is probably a specialty store), The Container Store, JoAnne's, Bed, Bath & Beyond, Home Depot and Office Depot. Is there an easy way to identify one from the other?
***they all compete on price, so no go... smith and hawkins is about the biggest you’d want, and Saks 5th Avenue is specialty too... think very upscale version...***
Yes, my product is something I ended up buying in a chain store (The Container Store, not sure if it's a conservator or a regular mainline retailer) and which I propose to import and sell to other regular mainline retailers. After finding a product, inadvertently, online on someone's blog, I dearly wanted it, but couldn't find it anywhere. I looked at Target, Fred Meyer's, Bed, Bath & Beyond, and Office Depot. Finally, I found and bought it from The Container Store.
***Cantainer store is a mass merchandiser... the other stores do not have it because they do not want it... you wont get near a buyer, and if you did they would say no... and even if they lked it lot they would tell you no and buy it themselves directly...***
My thinking is of the eleven western states, only 5 have The Container Store, and of those 5, each, except California, only has one location per state. If I imported the product, I could distribute it through the many more local and regional regular mainline retailers (ie, Nordstrom's, Kohl's, JC Penney, Sears, etc), at least until it gets picked up by the conservators. My innovation would be to have it made with additional surface design options.
***All of those, except Nordsrom, are conservators... but aagia, none of those will tke an item they can get faster cheaper than you can ever get it... if they wanted it...***
If The Container Store IS a regular mainline retail/specialty store, then my above question #3 should've read: Is it faulty thinking to believe a product carried in a regular mainline retailer/specialty store, which only has one location statewide, could be improved upon, imported and sold to the many other regular mainline retail/specialty stores statewide and regionally not currently carrying it?
I'm guessing it is not faulty thinking, that it is correct thinking, because wasn't the glass candle in the book an example of a product you saw being sold in one regular mainline retail/specialty store which you improved upon then re-introduced to other regular mainline retail/specialty stores?
***WEll now you are getting to design, which is the whole thing... yes, you can redesign if you think it solves a problem, but you need to test it in upscale stores that sell such items...***
I'm clear that I'm selling to regular mainline retailers or to the avant garde, not to conservators. I need to learn to identify them one from the other – regular mainline retailers from conservators.
***80% of your customers will be the sole proprietor, one store business... 20% would be nordstrom type bigger specialty...***
I'm also wondering if it matters where the new product idea comes from? That is, since I will ultimately improve upon the product in some way, does it matter whether the product idea comes from a product which is currently being sold by conservators or whether the product idea comes from a regular mainline retailer?
***the idea comes from you... sure it have its predecessor, but the product is essentially you.***
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Imports And Exports Up Again
From USA Census, Jan 2011 Report:
More at http://www.census.gov/indicator/www/ustrade.html
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
The FDA and Estrella Creamery
The way to get a promotion in a government bureaucracy is to gather scalps of the enemy. Three Nobel prizes went to economists who demonstrated that the regulators are always captured by the regulated. For example, the FDA enforces the big Food and Drug companies desires. This is why Ag Sec Earl Butz could say "the policy of the United States government is get big or get out.." which is just a version of the Stalinist collectivization programs. For Big Milk, small creameries are the enemy.
Award-winning Estrella Creamery, which in 25 years never made anyone sick, has been destroyed by an FDA functionary. It now depends on donations to keep operating, although it can no longer make cheese, and it will probably fold. It is too bad, because they make the mistake that so many people make, and that is they have no idea who they are up against.
Here is a film made by Mike Jones, which tells the story.
Now no one wishes to believe the FDA would do anything venal or spiteful, and that may even be true. But the FDA is staffed by people, any one of whom may be as venal and spiteful as any wall street banker. Promotion in the FDA comes by accomplishment, and none gets more notice than actions which crush the competition of big milk.
So the person behind the destruction of Estrella has a name, has a program, has hopes and dreams of his own, in his capacity as an FDA functionary. The trick is to end the "FDA vs Estrella" and switch to "Mr X vs. Estrella." Next, in pro se capacity, pester a judge and the US Attorney with a demand for a trial before a jury. It is not going to happen, but the US Atty will certainly eventually tell the clown looking for a promotion at the FDA, Mr X, to knock it off. And then, Mr. X, has a problem, well deserved, with his superiors.
If the Feds show up, do not play their game. They count on you being overwhelmed by their budget, and you crying uncle. Run to a judge immediately, and take on the US Atty. At that point every official action becomes court record, an unpleasant prospect for the martinet Mr. X. There is no way the judge and US Atty want to take the time and effort to do the bidding of big milk. They have better fish to fry.
Withdrawing Consent In the UK Too!
Citizens arrested a judge in the UK, which sounds much like the early USA, in which citizens blocked judges from sitting on the bench to hear cases in which, wait for it, rich bankers and financiers took the property of investors... this is all fine anglo-saxon/celtic uprising, to be admired. At another point I recommended the book Shays's Rebellion for another purpose, but now I recommend it again just to learn what early Americans did when faced with the exact same same injustice we now experience. While the powers that be worry whether the withdrawal of consent to be governed spreads in North AFrica and the middle east, they perhaps should worry that it may spread to the USA and UK.
If you found history boring in school, it is because they did not offer this kind of book. Read it, learn and enjoy.
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Withdrawing Consent To Be Governed
A crucial step in the return to peace and prosperity is to withdraw the consent to be governed. Here in Maine some people have taken that step, and we need much more of this.
Monday, March 7, 2011
Wired Gets Off-shoring Wrong
I stress that cheap labor is not a significant factor in international trade, never has been, never will be, nor could be in theory or practice. I do understand that many believe it to be so. I do understand that in some places, wages are lower than USA. I do understand that USA businesses sometimes, but not very often, actually buy from factories where the wages are cheaper. A problem arises when people believe cheap labor is a significant factor, because they act on that belief. Take a look at where USA trades, and where it buys things? Notice anything interesting?
Like 1. Canada is USA’s #1 trading partner, not China. 2. China is our #1 source for imports, but then it is the largest country in the world. 3. Canada is a small country, but sells us 3/4s as much as China. 4. Mexico is a small country, yet big in exports, but it is in oil and heavy machinery. 5. Look who else we buy the most from: Japan, Germany, UK. All countries far smaller than China, but pound for pound, sell us far more. And of course, none have lower labor rates. And guess which country is the worlds largest exporter: USA. Is that because everyone comes here for USA cheap labor? Of course not. There is simply nothing in reality to support the contention that cheap labor matters, but it does matter if you believe it, and act on it.
Wired magazine inadvertently makes this case. Here is an article:
My comments are in between the *** *** .
To quote:
Every time the Krywkos visited Dongguan, their Chinese partners assured them everything was under control. Those promises almost always proved empty.
***How did this happen more than once? It tells us about the Kwyrkos, not the Chinese. And where are the quotes from the factory side of the story?***
When the Krywkos returned to the US, they searched for a manufacturing partner with the tools and expertise to produce their earphones. They found one just a few miles away from their Palmetto, Florida, headquarters: Dynamic Innovations, a maker of ruggedized computers and other equipment. Sleek Audio quickly signed up.
*** Of the some 354,000 entities importing into the USA, almost everyone produces domestically as well. Importing is not a business, it is a tactic, acted on once fully informed. Before importing, one checks for USA sources. Sleek audio obviously failed to check in USA first, the job of any start-up business.***
Today, a year since Krywko’s decision to go against the offshoring tide... Each earphone costs roughly 50 percent more to produce in Florida than in China. ... But Krywko is more than happy to pay the premium to know that botched orders and shipping delays won’t ruin his company.
***Error: One reason China is growing so fast is countless first rate business people deliver product to specification, on time, at a fair price. These people can be found, but never look on alibaba.com or any other “trade lead” sources.
VEry simple basic business steps:
research
worldwide RFB:
sampling...
costings....
references***
And so far, the gambit appears to be paying off: Based on enthusiastic customer response, Sleek Audio is now projecting 2011 to be its most profitable year ever.
***Here we go again, like Fellowes... announce you are leaving china, leave production capacity behind, and watch someone else come in and manage better than you.***
As the labor equation has balanced out, companies—particularly the small to medium-size businesses that make up the innovative guts of America’s technology industry—are taking a long, hard look at the downsides of extending their supply chains to the other side of the planet.
***Prove it...***
“Companies are looking to base their decisions on more than just costs,” says Simon Ellis, head of supply-chain strategies practice at IDC
***Right, business 101, Product, place, price, promotion...business is more than just price, always has been . always will be, anyone who thinks just cost ends up like Sleek Audio, in trouble. Don’t blame the Chinese for that.***
When accounting giant KPMG International recently asked 196 senior executives to list their top concerns for 2011 and 2012, labor costs ranked below product quality and fluctuations in shipping rates and currency values.
***Correct, people in business don’t worry too much about labor rates, it is not a significant factor.***
And 19 percent of the companies that responded to an October survey by MFG.com, an online sourcing marketplace, said they had recently brought all or part of their manufacturing back to North America from overseas, up from 12 percent in the first quarter of 2010. This is one reason US factories managed to add 136,000 jobs last year—the first increase in manufacturing employment since 1997.
***19% of who? How is this meaningful? How much of that is necessitated by compliance with DOD contracts that war material be manufactured in USA? I doubt this return is sustainable without ever expanding war.***
The US certainly isn’t on the verge of recapturing its past industrial glory, nor can every business benefit by fleeing China. But those that actually build tangible goods should no longer assume that “Made in the USA” is an unaffordable luxury. Unless a company is hell-bent on selling the cheapest goods possible, manufacturing at home makes more sense than it has in a generation.
***This is unreflective. Almost everything sold in USA is made in USA, so the first point is goofy. All imports are only about 20% of our economy, which means 80% is made here. Walmart is doing extremely well being hell-bent on selling the cheapest goods possible. ***
China’s big manufacturing advantage has been cheap labor, but wages—while still low compared with those in the US—have risen sharply in recent years.
***Wrong. Less expensive management is the advantage China has. If Chinese labor rates have risen (which is true) then why is importing rising as well? For the same reason we bought more from japan as it experienced rising wages. They keep doing better work.***
Chinese factories deftly took advantage of this situation by making it easy for even the smallest US startups to find manufacturing partners. Factories polished their English-language outreach and established ties with professional middlemen. Soon anyone with a blueprint and modest capital could hire a Chinese factory to stamp out 20,000 units of a video tripod, an ergonomic joystick, or an espresso machine.
***And why do USA companies not make it easy for the smallest USA start-up to find manufacturing partners, etc? Why are we not deft? Is it bad that they are?***
But the system has started to overheat. Manufacturing wages more than doubled in China between 2002 and 2008, and the value of the nation’s currency has risen steadily.
***Like Japan before. Economics 201.***
It’s now under tremendous international pressure to let the yuan appreciate even more, and the country must cope with worrisome inflation at home (food prices rose by nearly 12 percent last year). And though Chinese workers still earn a fraction of what their American counterparts do, the rising costs of labor there are prompting companies to reevaluate their production strategies.
Once they do, these businesses often realize something profound: China isn’t the great deal they expected.
***China is under zero pressure due to Timmy’s huffing and puffing. Had any of these companies done a simple due diligence, they could have known before they spent 2 or 3 hundred dollars whether China was a viable source or not. Again, the vast majority of people trading with China are doing quite well. The story should be why these extreme few are doing poorly.***
A January 2010 survey by the consulting firm Grant Thornton found that 44 percent of responders felt they got no benefit from going overseas, while another 7 percent believed that offshoring had actually caused them harm.
***Again, meaningless without telling us who the sample is.***
One big reason for this growing dissatisfaction is quality. Like Sleek Audio, countless US firms have received long-awaited shipments only to discover that the products are too flawed to sell.
***No, this is easily countable. Duty drawback reports declaring destruction due to unsalability would give you a very close number. Quality control is a management issue. The vast majority of what China ships is to specification, on time. If someone gets less than ideal, that someone did not do his job.***
This problem is due largely to China’s success: Factories are so overbooked that they have no choice but to favor their biggest clients. The smaller customers can end up facing long delays or hastily assembled products (or both).
***No, the problem is due to a failure of USA managers. It is easy enough to find reliable factories. Simply check references.***
.
In addition to quality issues, subcontracting also exacerbates a second major problem with Chinese manufacturing: the lack of safeguards on intellectual property. The more subcontractors that get their hands on a design, the greater the odds of IP theft. Peerless Industries, an Illinois company that makes flatscreen and projector mounts, learned that lesson the hard way. “Knockoffs of our products started showing up in markets here in our own backyard,” says Michael Campagna, Peerless Industries’ chief operating officer. “It wasn’t necessarily our supplier doing it—it was our supplier’s supplier.”
***Here we go again, yet another company saying “we are failures in China... steal our supplier and markets. Fellowes, Sleek Audio and Peerless. The problem of knockoffs is so easily managed, as I lay out in my book. ***
In 2008, three McKinsey consultants analyzed the production of midrange servers, taking into account everything from shipping to quality to exchange rates. They concluded that fabricating such devices in China made sense in 2003, when the required labor was 60 percent cheaper there than in the US. At that time, they estimated, the per-unit savings ran about $64. But this advantage, McKinsey concluded, had vanished by 2008: “After factoring in the higher labor and freight costs, we find that the former offshore savings have turned negative—a burden of an extra $16.”
*** If true, midrange server manufacturers would have spotted it far before mckinsey. But observe, USA labor costs are still much higher, but yet cheaper to make in USA? Does this not yet again demonstrate labor rates are NOT a significant factor?***
This has become a common strategy among businesses that elect to manufacture in the US: Redesign with labor costs in mind. In essence, the companies are innovating around cheap labor. “We’ve redesigned products five or six times, trying to reduce the number of connectors, the number of screws, anything that would require additional labor,” says Albert VanLeeuwen, chief financial officer of QSI Corporation, a Salt Lake City manufacturer of rugged data terminals that has resisted the siren call of Asia. “With some of the products we’re introducing this year, we’ve decreased the labor content 40 percent.”
***Arrggghh... sounds great 40% savings. But when the component cost of labor is 5%, a forty per cent savings means cost of labor went from 5 to 3 %. Big deal. And robots do not get you cheaper labor, they get you no employee. Employees are management-intensive, and in USA to make a hire is to take on Uncle Sam as an adversarial business partner, in cahoots with the employee. USA business usually go overseas and buy where labor rates are the same mainly to avoid hiring USA workers. Fix that, and we’ll fix a lot of the USA unemployment problem. Even robots must be managed, and the Chinese will manage robots better than us, because part of USA management cost is to sit around whining about China, and begging Uncle Sam to bail you out when you fail.***
But what if that company wants to scale up and sell millions? Big customers get more than just the best price quotes and most prompt service from Asian factories; they also frequently receive massive government subsidies and perks. When a nation offers to pay hundreds of salaries and throw in free land to boot, an ambitious company can find it hard to say no.
***How is this different than in USA?***
But there is evidence that large corporations are no longer automatically swayed by these goodies. In October 2009, NCR decided to stop manufacturing its North American-market ATMs at facilities in China and India and make them instead in Columbus, Georgia. Last October, General Electric elected to invest $432 million in four new US manufacturing facilities that will build environmentally friendly refrigerators and water heaters. These are precisely the sort of companies that stand to benefit the most by heading overseas. But they determined that the smarter long-term play was to narrow the physical distance between R&D and production. “By colocating all the people who are involved in bringing a product to life, we increase collaboration and problem-solving and shorten development time,” says Kevin Nolan, GE Appliances’ vice president of technology.
***GE is one of the largest recipients of taxpayer bailouts, and war machine contractor. How is its experience relevant to anyone in a legitimate business?***
It’s also a safe bet that Asia will fight to win back those smaller companies. It will likely do this not by lowering prices but by ironing out the procedural kinks that have made offshoring an increasingly dicey proposition. Factories in the Chinese interior will try to prove their reliability, aided by government programs designed to improve the nation’s infrastructure. Quality-control regimes will be revamped to decrease the number of lemons that slip onto container ships.
Meanwhile, other countries will continue to offer an alternative to either staying in China or coming home. Vietnam, for example, is trying to position itself as a viable option for Western tech companies, a sales pitch strengthened by the fact that Intel recently opened a 500,000-square-foot factory in Ho Chi Minh City.
***In the meantime, USA invades countries that are no threat to us, countries that can overthrow their own dictators without our help anyway. Why don’t we make USA attractive for importers overseas to buy from us? For us to manufacture here? Quite the contrary, it is the stated policy of the US Government: get big or get out.***
Delays and quality control are management issues. it is management that matters, not cheap labor. And in some categories, to get good management, the price is the same as USA. You can know before you go.
Sunday, March 6, 2011
WalMart vs. Specialty: Advantage Specialty
This would be a great time to be a specialty retailer, especially if you like a good fight. For the first time in the history of mass merchandising, the big box stores are moving into the physical territory of the specialty stores. Economics and the internet is forcing them to do so. The mass merchandisers are sending out scouts, and the specialty retailers can send a message back to Bentonville, by the way these scouts are dealt with.
Let me preface that no specialty store has ever been harmed by WalMart in any way (and I am using WalMart here generically, in place of all mass-merchandisers), quite the contrary, WalMart has left more disposable income in peoples' pockets, which studies show get spent at specialty stores. The relationship between the two has been symbiotic, mutually beneficial beneficial.
WalMart did wipe out the little discounter, the five and dime, and any retailer that failed to become a specialty store as WalMart emerged. Anyone not prepared to make more money selling less (by migrating up market in their product mix) failed. There are plenty of enterprising people who made the shift.
But it is undeniable that when Walmart emerged, businesses did fail. Now, due to declining growth rates, walmart and home depot and best buy are testing the waters where they will be as shredded as once the witless small business was shredded. You can help shred them, speed the process up.
Here is their rationale:
Office Depot Inc., meanwhile, quietly began opening new shops the size of convenience stores in December. The new 5,000-square-foot Office Depot stores are barely a fifth the size of the company's traditional locations, yet still manage to contain the office supplies and copy and mail services that account for 93% of the bigger stores' sales, said Kevin Peters, Office Depot's North American retail president.
Hang on... did they think this through? If I can get 93% of what you sell in a closer more convenient location, why would I ever visit your big box location, except in the rate instance I am buying a cheap chair (and there are plenty of used chair locations I can get cheap and good...) If I stop visiting the big box, then how long can you carry it?
If I am retailer, and you are offering Swingline staplers in your store for $7, which you buy for five because you are so big, and I cannot get for less than $10, because I am so small... I will walk into your store, buy four, and then put them on my shelves, for $7.00 also. Next, in my window, in huge letters, I am going to show "Swingline Stapler: Home Depot $7.00; Me $7.00." Since no one buys just a stapler, I break even on the stapler, make it on something else, and break Office Depot.
As the article linked above states, Staples is the #2 online retailer behind amazon.com, since so many people buy office supplies online. So, I would link my upscale stationary store website as an affiliate to Office Depot, Staples, amazon, etc. I would direct my customers to those websites, and earn the affiliate fee on the sales, but credit my customers with say 50% of the fee, as a credit on their next purchase inside my store. Most of the data is available already (I know from what affiliate programs I have) so it is just a matter of some database software to record it. I hope this makes sense, if not, please ask me to clarify. These companies are too big to have an effective defense against this, their crowding in where they cannot work will fail, and it is our duty as good merchants to hurry the process along. Every time a secretary buys a ream of paper from Staples through your store, she gets a credit for your store, thanks to a spiff funded by Staples.
I am not a retailer, but I adore a good fight. I envy those retailers who will be executing this strategy (it does not mater if I thought it up myself, fact is, so did 500 other people who read the same article.)
These test stores will get their knuckles rapped, but it is tradable. Make money as they make their mistakes.
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