Ever eager to stay up on all of the latest Interweb news and techniques, we dispatched a pair of Brand Labs representatives to San Francisco last week for the 2010 Search Engine Strategies conference.
These were not just any ol’ Brand Labs flunkies sent to soak up a free week of Rice-A-Roni and hemp t-shirts, but our Vice President, Dane Downer and Online Marketing Specialist, Jackie McClelland, on a mission to expand their already formidable knowledge of all things having to do with SEO. They’re shown here attending one of the many seminars and symposia that severely cut into their sightseeing while simultaneously confirming that we totally know what we’re doing.
Rue-La-La is an “invitation only” high fashion discount shopping service. Once you’ve registered, you’ll receive exclusive daily offers sent right to your inbox and then it’s up to you to spend, spend, spend until you’re totally fabulous and/or fierce.
Well, by happy happenstance, today’s exclusive offer was headlined by two Brand Labs’ clients: Madison Avenue Couture and Lois Hill. Both new store designs are still in progress, so we can’t link you to them, but trust us when we say they’re both fabulous and fierce.
It’s always exciting to see a client featured in another outlet (unless it’s on COPS or 60 Minutes) so today we’re doubly pleased.
Our founders spent some time at the recent Internet Retailers Conference and Exhibition in Chicago, and a good portion of that time was spent in the company of our bestest friends at Volusion. Here you’ll see Volusion’s video recap of the event and starting at about 1:22 you can see Dane and Kevin (from left to right) talking about the future of eCommerce. Their answer is pretty lengthy just because it would be rude to say, “The future of eCommerce is Brand Labs,” before throwing some gang signs and walking off camera (which was the original plan).
Last week, our founders (and senior corporate officers) Kevin Harman and Dane Downer, attended the Internet Retailer Conference & Exhibition in Chicago. In addition to representin’ for Brand Labs, they had the opportunity to meet with our friends at Volusion, including founder and president, Kevin Sproles (seen here chatting with Kevin and Dane).
Attendance for the conference was up significantly over last year and the prevailing tone was overwhelmingly optimistic, as eCommerce continues to assert its critical position in the world of consumer retail operations as a whole. The obvious buzzword (or buzzphrase, if you will) was mobile commerce, and as the first developers of a mobile Volusion platform, we weren’t surprised one little bit. Hit the jump to see a few pics of Brand Labs with all the party people…
Dane Downer and Kevin Harman (our vice president and president, respectively) will be attending the Internet Retailer Conference & Exhibition at McCormick Place West in Chicago next week. They’ll be there for all four days of the conference and would love to meet up with any of our current (or potential) customers who are interested in chatting about eCommerce.
If you’d like to set something up, you can email Dane at dane.downer@brandlabs.us or Kevin at kevin.harman@brandlabs.us, or just look for these happy, smiling faces on the show floor (Dane’s on the left, Kevin on the right). They’re prepared at all times to drop some eCommerce knowledge.
We’ve been very lucky here at Brand Labs over the last several years. We’ve managed to grow our business by several hundred percent since the Great Recession began. We’ve added hundreds of new clients and a couple dozen employees while our neighbors here in Michigan have seen some very dark times… and Michigan isn’t alone. It’s been rough for everyone and even though we like to believe that most of our success has been due to hard work and skill, we’ve seen enough clever, industrious people who have fallen on hard times for us to comfortably dismiss the idea that we’ve also been amazingly fortunate. For that good fortune, we are grateful.
If we may paraphrase the immortal Stan Lee: With great gratitude comes great responsibility. With that in mind, we’ve chosen to launch our first ongoing philanthropic effort: Brand Labs’ One Laptop Per Child Per Week program. Through this program, we will be donating one OLPC XO laptop every week. These laptops are given to children all over the globe (and right here in the States) to encourage education and connectivity in communities that are lacking in both.
We’re proud of this effort and we’ll mention it every single chance we get, and not because we want you to think we’re super awesome. We’re going to keep mentioning it because we’d like to encourage all of our customers and friends to consider giving to this very worthy cause… or the worthy cause of their choice.
Over the past decade, the world has proven two things to us. First, it can be a very cruel place. Second (and more importantly), mankind has a seemingly boundless capacity for giving, both from the heart and from the wallet.
We’ve taken a small step toward becoming the kind of corporate neighbor we intend to be. We’d be delighted if you’d like to join in…
A couple of days ago, Volusion announced the upcoming introduction of their new Partners Program. In addition to being thrilled about the program itself, we were also flattered that they chose us to represent the type of partnership that they hope to build with each of the program’s members. You can read the announcement here. (Read all the way to the end to read our contribution.)
Of course, we’ve always made our feelings about Volusion pretty clear. We’ve counted and there are over 23 bazillion uses of the word Volusion scattered throughout our site and at least one member of our staff has the Volusion logo tattooed on a very private region of their body, so we’re obviously down with the V, but it’s gratifying to know that our devotion is reciprocated. How reciprocated? Well, here’s what Volusion has to say about us:
“Over the past ten years, we’ve had the privilege to develop several relationships in becoming a leading ecommerce provider. One that stands out above the rest is our partnership with Brand Labs, an indispensable asset to our community. When we launched the Volusion Partner Network, we gladly welcomed Brand Labs as an Agency Partner. We are eager to further extend our collaboration with Brand Labs into the future by focusing on what is best in helping our merchants succeed.”
James Booker – Business Development Manager – Volusion
… to be fair, we added the bold to the “indispensable asset” part, but that was our favorite bit.
We look forward to the continuation of our long and happy partnership. Thanks Volusion!
The new platform operates entirely within FaceBook, the ubiquitous social media network, offering merchants an exciting new opportunity to connect to their customers in new ways.
ShopFans isn’t simply a store within FaceBook. Its features allow customers to interact with the store… sharing links, creating wishlists and allowing users to “Like” specific items.
Kevin Harman (our fearless leader) has packed up his shiny new iPad and his tattered passport in preparation for his trip to Toronto and the Search Marketing Expo (April 8-9).
He’ll be attending conferences, shamelessly networking and handing out business cards like there’s no tomorrow. If you see him and you want to learn a heck of a lot about Volusion marketing services, please be sure to introduce yourself.
… the rest of us, on the other hand, will be back here in Michigan, holding down the fort. We sure as heck won’t be sneaking out early just because the boss is out of town. No way. Not us.
We’ve been blogging for a while here and since we’ve recently noticed an increase in readership, we thought we’d add a feature that’s been on our to do list for some time: RSS.
RSS (most commonly expanded as “Really Simple Syndication”) is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works—such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video—in a standardized format…The user subscribes to a feed by entering into the reader the feed’s URI or by clicking an RSS icon in a web browser that initiates the subscription process.
So, if you’d like to subscribe to our posts, you can do so by clicking on the icon at the top of the column to the right, or if you’re viewing our mobile version, tap the little menu arrow on the right side of the header and a menu will pop up. Thanks!
Ever eager to stay up on all of the latest Interweb news and techniques, we dispatched a pair of Brand Labs representatives to San Francisco last week for the 2010 Search Engine Strategies conference.
Dane Downer and Kevin Harman (our vice president and president, respectively) will be attending the 
