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).
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!
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.
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.
We design, develop and launch so darn many stores that every once in a while, one escapes the notice of this remorseful blogger. SupplyWays.com is just such a site.
You’ll see that under the category tags for this post, it’s listed under: Site Launches – Office Supplies, but that’s only because we don’t have an “Everything Supplies” category. Basically, if you have a business that requires supplies of any kind, Supply Ways should be able to hook you up. Healthcare, Janitorial, Manufacturing, Office… the list just goes on and on.
So, we offer a heartfelt (and belated) congratulations to SupplyWays.com on their new Volusion store!
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!
PowerReviews, one of our corporate partners, has just secured over $6 million in investment capital to help expand and strengthen their already remarkable brand.
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.
Carnal DaMMAge, one of the leading online retailers of MMA-related goods, took a big step forward today with the launch of their iPhone-friendly website.
Now, Carnal DaMMAge’s customers will be able to shop (and buy) on a mobile-optimized Volusion site, eliminating one more barrier between browsing and conversion.
You, too, can have an iPhone-friendly Volusion store for less than a thousand dollars! (Okay… it’s $995, so not a lot less than a thousand… but still, it’s less.)
If you’d like to capture some of the ever-expanding mCommerce market (quickly and affordably) check out iVoloo. On the other hand, if you’d like to beat the tar out of someone, but you’d like to be sure you’re properly outfitted first, check out Carnal DaMMAge.
Volusion is proud to announce its newest credit card fraud protection service, Fraud Score. This new service helps merchants detect fraudulent orders before payments are processed. Fraud Score works by identifying 15+ traits, patterns and trends associated with fraudulent orders. The proprietary system then generates a score to help storeowners analyze order risk.
Dane Downer and Kevin Harman (our vice president and president, respectively) will be attending the 
