Seven To Ten

Some retailers have blamed an early Easter and cooler weather for decreasing store sales in March. These two factors, combined with sluggishness in consumer spending, exacerbated the damage.

It is a perfect storm of factors: Gas and food prices are at an all-time high, the housing market is deteriorating, the credit market is tighter and consecutive months of job losses. However, retailers are looking forward to April sales. Last April, sales fell 1.8%. So the comparisons are easier. Also, seasonal purchases should get a boost as the weather improves.

Sales tracker Thomson Financial has reported that many retailers have missed analysts’ estimates than beating forecasts. The disappointments were more pronounced for firms like Limited Brands, owner of Victoria’s Secret and Bath & Body Works chains, and teen apparel chain Pacific Sunwear which logged an 8% sales decline.

If you are in business (whether it is retail, restaurant, phone order or e-commerce), there comes a time when you have to accept credit card payments. This will elevate your company profile and push your sales to the next plateau.

The problem is where to look for a secure, fast, affordable, and user-friendly credit cards machine? I believe Flagship Merchant Services has the answer. They possess a huge market share in credit card processing services, based on their ultra competitive pricing programs, technical expertise, customer service, and reliability.

Using Flagship services, merchants can now accept credit cards, debit card, and checks (basically, any non cash transactions) at the point of sale, over the internet. If you worry about exorbitant set-up fees and believe that a credit card machine is only for big corporations and not your tiny one-man show, you are off the mark.

There no account set-up fee, paperwork or annual fee. You also get for free: shopping cart, credit card terminal program, online sales tracking and reporting and American Express set-up. All merchants will also be assigned an account representative and receive priority customer support 24 hours a day in 150 languages.

See, you are paying almost nothing to get skyrocketing sales and a hassle-free experience.

Before you get all excited, you have not asked the all-important questions when it comes to credit-card payments: chargebacks and fraud. Are merchants being taken seriously on this issue by Flagship Merchant Services? Well, you are in safe hands as they have one of the largest credit card fraud, loss prevention and chargeback departments in the credit card processing industry.

My friend has a small business selling hand-made crafts, maybe I can introduce him to this site. While paypal is convenient, I think he will appreciate getting a merchant account for minimal cost.

Do you know that even in the luxury retail, the exclusive cliente are also interested in bargains and mega-sales? If the super-rich likes the idea of discounts, then we can’t blame the man in the street for heckling about prices. Fact is, everybody loves a good bargain…

Today’s consumers are savvy and they try to shop for branded goods which must give them a sense of value. If you have little time to pound the streets, especially guys, why not try online shopping? I found this site, shopwiki.com , that allows you to shop for a myraid of items.

Traditional shopping sites will only show you stores that have paid for listing but ShopWiki has gone a step further with its unique algorithm which allows it to crawl every store on the internet, similar to what Google does.

I will say their service is like your personal shopper that sifts through all available products and bring the best choices in front of your screen. This is a value added service for shoppers at zero cost. I have zoomed into their shoes sections to find some cool sneakers and cowboy boots at the best price, of course. I can comparison shop on the spot without doing a search myself and then visiting the individual online shopping sites. Talk about convenience…

Besides buying my own stuff, I also look at the ladies’ section and see get a present for my wife. Mother’s Day is coming and I think she has been a marvelous mom to our kid. She loves handbags and stiletto heels so I am going to give her a pleasant surprise.

I am quite happy to stumble upon this site because I can get lots of creative gift ideas than if I visited any brick and mortar stores. It is not difficult to find bargains, just spend some time to browse through their shopping directory and you will not be disappointed.

Yesterday, I mentioned about the slump in retail. Consumer spending is low, besides all the poor economic news, there is the sky-high prices of commodities, what else is there left to spend on retail at the end of each month? Daily staples take a priority to material needs now.

At this time, if you are in retail, breaking out of tradition and offering a unique experience to customers is the way to go. Conducting more research to find out the popular products and what your competitors are doing are also important. As part of your research, I believe joining online communities is an excellent idea.

Just as an example, over at Style Hive, you can find a community of fashion lovers. Style Hive is not regarded as the worlds’ largest social shopping community for nothing - you can join their interesting forum discussions, get to follow cool people and plug into the latest global shopping trends. You know which items are the hottest finds by the number of hives (saves).

In this page, you can snoop in on the latest handbag craze. It indicates all the hot handbags found, “hived”, and tagged “handbag” by all the shopping fanatics within the Stylehive community. A list of the most popular handbags over the last month is also available.

For active contributers, start building your own community today by bookmarking and adding your favorite items to your wishlist. Alternatively, send, blog or comment on the items to let other members know what you think.

If you are knowledgeable about fashion, or more specifically handbags, your contributions will be appreciated and I am sure you will have a strong group of following in no time… last I check, some of the popular members have more than 5000 followers. When it comes to social networks, always remember that the more effort you put in, the more you will receive at the end of the day.