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Archive for the ‘eCommerce’ Category
Posted: Thursday, August 5, 2010 in Clients, eCommerce
 There’s a nice feature about J.W. Hulme in the August 3 edition of the Wall Street Journal.
The focus of the feature is how this long-standing American institution managed to (barely) weather the recent financial storm, through a great deal of personal sacrifice and some last-minute outside investment. It’s a compelling story. Trust us (or go read it).
We’re working on their new Volusion store right now. Look for a shiny, new site coming soon!
Posted: Tuesday, June 15, 2010 in Clients, Industry, Internet, News, Volusion, eCommerce
 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…
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: Monday, June 14, 2010 in Clients, eCommerce
 One of our most gracious and generous clients (here, here, and here) has (once again) attracted the attention of the national media with a cover story in the June issue of Home Accents Today.
Mixed in with Garden Gates’ truly interesting story is a special, secret Brand Labs testimonial. From the article:
What’s the best idea, event or change you’ve made recently in the way you operate or market your store?
If I told you my ideas, I would either have to kill you or charge you.
Granted, Chad could be talking about almost anything. He is, after all, an unstoppable marketing machine… but we like to believe that we’re at least some small part of his recent successes (based solely on the number of baked goods we’ve received in gratitude for a job well done).
We hope that our revelation of this bit of Chad’s big plan doesn’t mean that we’re now a target for assassination or some sort of unexpected chargeback.
Congrats on your cover story Chad! Here’s to your continued good fortune and us not being killed by your highly skilled team of ninjas!
(via Home Accents Today)
Posted: Thursday, May 20, 2010 in Business, Industry, eCommerce
 Consumer product super-conglomerate Procter & Gamble has just jumped into the direct-to-consumer market with the launch of their generically-named eStore.
The impact of this move on the retail world is potentially huge; it threatens the (already waning) relevance of brick & mortar stores by (again, potentially) undercutting them pretty dramatically on price. This early effort doesn’t seem to be pushing the envelope on that front, but time will tell how low online prices can go when the middle man is removed from the equation.
… we see a couple of takeaways relative to our personal business model. First, we’ve already been experiencing a rise in manufacturers entering into DTC marketing and it’s something that we encourage. There’s no better way to control your brand by talking directly to your consumers. Second, should this trend catch on, it will become a lot easier for all online merchants to compete. It levels the playing field. If all (or most) of your competition is online, you can compete head-to-head, without having to concern yourself with the apples to oranges comparisons that come with competing against brick & mortar operations.
(via TechCrunch)
 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!
 Adgregate Markets today introduced ShopFans, a social shopping program and one of its debut retailers is StyleQ, (a Brand Labs client).
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.
(via TechCrunch)
Posted: Thursday, April 1, 2010 in Clients, Industry, eCommerce
 One of our newest clients, Matcha Source, was just recognized by AOL Small Business in their From the Expert column. In the column, Alissa White, Matcha’s owner, is profiled and you learn the tale of the company’s founding and growing success.
If you click on the Matcha Source link above, you’ll get to see Alissa’s site before we got our hands on it. See, she’s a really new customer, so we haven’t completed any work for the site yet, but we really wanted to tell you about the AOL piece, so here we are.
Be sure to visit Matcha Source again in a couple of months to see the results of our work!
… or just visit every day and buy a lot of matcha while you wait for all the exciting changes. That works too.
Posted: Wednesday, January 6, 2010 in Industry, Technology, eCommerce
 We admit it. We have unnaturally strong feelings for our iPhones. We are rarely without them. If you were to attend a meeting at Brand Labs, you would likely see ten people gathered around a conference table and on that table would be ten iPhones… or nine iPhones and one sad-looking person with a Razr in their pocket. So, it’s official: we’re dorks. With that being said, we’ll take it one step further and admit our deep and abiding love for RedLaser – the app that’s likely to change the way the world shops.
RedLaser is a beautifully simple little app. For the ridiculously low price of two bucks, it will turn your iPhone into a mobile comparison shopping machine. Let’s say, for example, that you’re at your local Target store and you see a shiny, new toaster that’s just what you’ve been looking for, but you think you might be able to get a better deal elsewhere. Well, just whip out your iPhone, launch the app and point the phone’s camera at the toaster’s barcode. In mere seconds, not only will you see a listing of local brick and mortar competitors who also carry that exact toaster (along with what they’re charging) but you’ll also see results from both Google and The Find’s comparison shopping engines… effectively allowing you to search the entire world for the best deal on that perfect, little toaster! What does this mean for you, the online retailer? Well, it means you’d better include Comparison Shopping Engines in your marketing efforts or you’ll be missing out on the opportunity to get new customers who might otherwise have never even heard of you.
The world is changing pretty damn quickly these days. We can help you keep up.
(via Occipital)
Posted: Wednesday, November 25, 2009 in eCommerce
 The 800 pound gorilla of online auctions, eBay, has been reaching out to its mobile consumers for some time with their shopping app for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Based on the success of their initial foray into mobile commerce, they’ve just introduced a new app: Deals.
The move makes perfect sense for the eCommerce juggernaught as they’re currently on track to earn a half billion bucks strictly through mobile sales. If only there were some way to put your Volusion store on the iPhone. Wouldn’t that be great?
(via TechCrunch)
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One of Twitter’s co-founders, Jack Dorsey, is on the cusp of changing how we all do business with his latest contribution to the world of mobile commerce: 
