by Board Retailers Association | Sep 12, 2020 | Associate Members, Resources, Retail Strategy
My partners and I started Locally 5 years ago with a vision of helping online shoppers find and complete their purchases with their favorite nearby stores. We saw that consumer behavior was shifting to online product research and feared that local stores would increasingly be cut off from shoppers’ decision-making process. The initial effort was relatively small. We had 13 retailers participating after the first year, and all we could do for them is try to help them win natural search results in their town. At the time, the idea of local stores winning the SEO battles was seen as landing somewhere between futile and irrelevant. Adoption was slow. But things change. Over the next couple of years, we built more point-of-sale (POS) connections for retailers to use when joining, and we started building tools for brands to use in their own marketing and on their sites. As we drove more consumer engagements, more businesses joined the platform. More retailers started sharing inventory, more brands started displaying local ways to buy things. And, we kept iterating. First, we added Reserve-Online-Pay-In-Store (ROPIS). A year later we built Buy-Online-Pickup-In-Store (BOPIS or Click-and-Collect). Last year, we added support for Same-Day Delivery via third party couriers like Postmates. Today, we’re working on Ship-to-Store (which lets brands and stores work together on full-service local pickups). Soon, we will offer local returns for online purchases, even further closing the loop between stores, brands, and shoppers. 1.9 Billion Shopper Engagements in December Over the 5 year arc of adoption, we’ve gone from 13 participating stores to almost 10,000 in over 3,500 cities. We’ve gone from 25 founding brand partners...
by Board Retailers Association | Sep 1, 2020 | Educational Opportunity, Industry, News, Resources, Retail Strategy, Skateboard, SUP, Surf, Trade Shows, Wake Skate, Wake Surf, Wakeboard, Women's Market
Please click on the following link to view this relevant Shop Eat Surf Article about this month’s Surf Expo connect Virtual Show from the perspective of Surf Expo Show Director, Emerald SVP and OG BRA Founder: Roy Turner on How Virtual Surf Expo Will Work, Committed Brands Be sure to visit the Shop Eat Surf website to view valuable Industry News and Resourceful Articles regularly via this link: Shop Eat Surf If you are not already a BRA Retail Member, you can easily opt in to either Regular (no cost) or Distinguished ($99/yr.) Membership via this super simple join...
by Board Retailers Association | Aug 31, 2020 | Associate Members, Industry, News, Resources, Retail Strategy, Surf
Challenging times are prime for innovation and during the pandemic and it’s great to see new ideas find their way into the industry. One new innovation that caught my attention was Surfcare, the world’s first surfboard protection plan. Where if your board gets dinged, they’ll fix it for free. And if they can’t fix it, they’ll replace it. Now before you roll your eyes and dismiss this idea, take a moment to think about the things you might insure already – like your cell phone, home, car, etc. We already look to protect our purchase of expensive items so it makes a lot of sense that a service like Surfcare would be valued when purchasing a new surfboard – especially as costs of surfboards have risen over the years. I not only had a chance to catch up with the two founders, Nick Stolz and Rhett McNulty, to get more details of their new service but got some feedback from one of their retailers and a customer. Here’s what they all shared with me. Now that Surfcare has been available in the market for a period of time, what have you learned about the service based on retailer and consumer feedback? From the consumer standpoint, all of the protection plans whether monthly, annual, or 2-year, have been getting purchased evenly. It’s difficult to say which one will become the favorite this early on. We do expect that we will need time to change buying behavior even if people think Surfcare is great. Surfers aren’t used to adding that extra cost to their boards so the increased visibility and education on the...
by Board Retailers Association | Aug 28, 2020 | Educational Opportunity, Resources, Retail Strategy
How Retailers Can Compete in a Free Shipping World Click the link above to view this episode In this episode of Retail Right Now, Total Retail’s Joe Keenan and Kristina Stidham discuss Total Retail’s latest research report, How to Make Free Shipping Profitable. The report is the compilation of a 10-part article series that Total Retail published on the topic earlier this year. The report is intended to educate retailers on how they can offer free shipping, helping them to remain a viable option in a saturated and ultracompetitive e-commerce market, without it becoming a money-losing proposition. This has taken on even more significance given the COVID-19 landscape, and consumers increasing penchant to shop online. The report addresses various buttons that retailers can push to offset the cost of offering free shipping on online orders. Within the report, insights are shared on such things as comparing carrier rates to find the best provider for your business, the role of marketing in offering free shipping, how product returns factor into the free shipping equation, among many others. You can download the complimentary report, How to Make Free Shipping Profitable, by clicking here. Total Retail is the go-to source for executives looking for the latest news and analysis on the retail industry. Be sure to bookmark this helpful and relevant site: https://www.mytotalretail.com/ If you are not yet a BRA Retail Member, you can easily opt in to either Regular (no cost) or Distinguished ($99/yr.) Membership via this super simple join...
by Board Retailers Association | Aug 26, 2020 | Resources, Retail Strategy
Brief: Facebook added a shopping section to its main social networking app and plans to offer more software tools to help businesses set up online stores. Facebook Shop is a dedicated place for merchants to show product catalogs to shoppers who can buy items directly through the app, the company announced in a blog post.The company also plans to offer Instagram Checkout to all U.S. businesses, letting them sell products directly through the photo-sharing app. To use the service, businesses must have a shop in the app and use Facebook Commerce Manager or e-commerce platforms Shopify and BigCommerce. Facebook plans to support other platforms soon. The company is waiving selling fees through the end of 2020 to help small businesses during the pandemic.Facebook and Instagram Shops are integrated with the company’s messaging apps, letting businesses answer questions from shoppers before they make a purchase. A messaging button connects shoppers with businesses through Messenger or Instagram Direct, while a test with WhatsApp will begin soon. Following recent pilots, the company also introduced a “live shopping” feature on Facebook and Instagram, letting merchants livestream a shopping session to customers. Instagram Live Shopping is available to all businesses and creators that use checkout in the U.S., per Facebook’s blog. Insight: Facebook aims to help mobile marketers sell directly through its family of apps, including its main social network and Instagram, with this week’s expansion of e-commerce features. The recent jump in e-commerce activity during the pandemic has hastened the company’s move into online shopping, letting businesses convert Facebook and Instagram users into paying customers. The features are especially useful for small businesses or creators with limited financial and technological...
by Board Retailers Association | Aug 25, 2020 | Associate Members, Industry, Resources, Retail Strategy, Surf
New surfboards, as we all know, are expensive. And, unfortunately, they’re also easy to break. Snapping or dinging a brand-new fiberglass investment has happened to every surfer at least once — and when it happens, it’s a shitty, sinking feeling. Enter Surfcare. Straight out of the why didn’t I think of that department, Surfcare is a new insurance company that protects the hard-earned cash you spend on your very fragile surfboards. How does it work? Well, it’s pretty straightforward, actually: Buy a Surfcare plan directly from the surf shop where you purchased the board, or (within 30 days of buying the board), sign up for Surfcare by uploading a photo of the surfboard and the receipt on the Surfcare website, and choose a plan there. 10 bucks monthly gets you coverage against breaks, buckles and fin boxes. 12 bucks and you also get ding repair. And for 14 dollars your removable fins are insured as well. (Yearly plans are discounted further.) “We created Surfcare off that feeling that you get when you break your favorite board on the first session while it’s pumping,” says founder Nick Stolz. “It’s always been our goal to help people surf happier and to eliminate some of that bad, board-break feeling.” Sound too good to be true? Well, it isn’t. Whether you break your board on your first wave, or two years later (the max protection period), so long as you’re still insuring that board Surfcare will work with the surf shop or manufacturer where you purchased it and replace it with a brand new replica. In either scenario, all you’re on the hook for is a...
