Preparing for This Dream--and Your Next

When my husband and I were running our own small chain of retail business, life was good. It was during retailing’s heyday and we were in the best of fields. Remember the Precious Moments craze? Beany Babies? Lladro Porcelain? 

Others in our industry—our fellow retailers, our representatives, our suppliers—were buying Ferraris and parking them in specially marked spaces in their business’s parking lots so everyone would know how successful they were. Well, you know me. Frugal. We saved, reinvested and felt pretty smart that we had seed money for something else when the collectibles market collapsed. 

But it wasn’t long before the whole economy collapsed. Lesson here? The only thing you can count on is ups and downs. During the ups (your tenth book just hit The New York Times bestseller list! You just signed a lease for prime retailing space in Las Vegas), savor it. But also save for a rainy day. Continue to offer a helping hand when you can to those in your profession (and others). And don’t sit back on your laurels. And don't flaunt it.

 You’ll still have a dream--maybe a nother dream--one that goes beyond what you imagined.  Go for it! 

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Carolyn Howard-Johnson's FRUGAL book for retailers is A Retailer’s Guide to Frugal In-Store Promotions: How To Increase Profits and Spit in the Eyes of Economic Downturns with Thrifty Events and Sales Techniques launched at the National Stationery Show at Javits Center. Because she is the author of the multi award-winning how-to books for writers,The Frugal Book Promoter: How To Do What Your Publisher Won't and The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success, retailers will also find essentials of writing for blogs, Web sites, and newsletters on this blog. She is the author of an award-winning novel, This Is the Place; and other fiction and poetry. She blogs on better writing at The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor blog. Find her tweeting for retailers at @frugalretailing . If your followers at Twitter would benefit from this blog post, please use this little green widget to let them know about it:

Retailing: Taking a Marketing Tip From Amazon

In the News: Publisher’s Weekly reports that Amazon will open its first staffed pick-up location on a college campus at Purdue University. They have co-branded with school stores like the University of California Davis and U Mass at Amherst in the past, but this is the first college “convenience spot.” I see this as a brilliant branding effort. As the concept continues to grow, it will give Amazon’s brand as a provider of books and other essentials to a massive book-reading audience, a young audience that will continue to be part of their clentele for a long, long time to come. What can we retailers learn from this marketing move? In terms of service? In terms of location? In terms of acquiring new customers from our most sought after demographic?

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Carolyn Howard-Johnson's FRUGAL book for retailers is A Retailer’s Guide to Frugal In-Store Promotions: How To Increase Profits and Spit in the Eyes of Economic Downturns with Thrifty Events and Sales Techniques launched at the National Stationery Show at Javits Center. Because she is the author of the multi award-winning how-to books for writers,The Frugal Book Promoter: How To Do What Your Publisher Won't and The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success, retailers will also find essentials of writing for blogs, Web sites, and newsletters on this blog. She is the author of an award-winning novel, This Is the Place; and other fiction and poetry. She blogs on better writing at The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor blog. Find her tweeting for retailers at @frugalretailing . If your followers at Twitter would benefit from this blog post, please use this little green widget to let them know about it: