Retail Consultant Robert Medak Reviews Marketing Book Especially Written for Retailers

A review of A Retailer’s Guide to Frugal In-Store Promotions
by Carolyn Howard-Johnson



Reviewed by Robert Medak

A Retailer’s Guide to Frugal In-Store Promotions lists a series of frugal ways of promoting your business, in good economic times as well as bad; and not break the bank in the process. Anyone in the retail business should read this 120-page book. There is a good deal of information in a small book that is of use to retailers, and their business no matter the present circumstances.
Many of the ideas are common sense, but also things that retailers may not have thought of. There are many inexpensive concepts that are easy to implement in your store, whether it is large or small. The size does not matter, the ideas in this book are what can help retailers grow their customer base with a few simple adjustments to present stock and how to deal with it. Simple promotion ideas that may cost only a few dollars, to free can increase your business over time. Fortunately, the few ideas listed in this book may trigger some things retailers can come up with on their own.

Do you need more business in your store? A Retailer’s Guide to Frugal In-Store Promotions can help you with simple ideas form how to move and arrange your stock and more. There are also some simple and effective ways to garner publicity in your local newspaper and have customers send you business with ideas that may cost you nothing expect some time and training of your employees.
A Retailer’s Guide to Frugal In-Store Promotions is an easy to read book that can help all retailers do more promotion for your business without spending a lot of money.

I recommend this book for any retailer and award it a four star rating.


----Endorsement Disclaimer: All reviews posted on this site and written by this reviewer are personal opinions of the book by this reviewer. The reviews are NOT paid endorsements of the book or the author. They are not advertisements. All reviews are honest, forthright and the opinion of this individual reviewer. This reviewer’s opinions are not for sale. (There is however, a small fee for some reviews, and sometimes this reviewer receives complementary copies from the author.) Federal Trade Commission 16 CFR Part 255 (http://www.ftc.gov/os/2009/10/091005revisedendorsementguides.pdf)


Reviewer Robert Medak is a freelance writer and editor and serves the retail industry as a consultant and editor of promotional materials like blogs. Find him at http://www.stormywriter.com/.

Carolyn Howard-Johnson is also the author of Frugal and Focused Tweeting for Retailers.

----- 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:

Learning How Not To Market From the Big Guys

It seems, Abercrombie and Fitch . . . .mmmm, borrowed the name "Hollister" from a California town for one of its lines of clothing.

Seems after they did, they wouldn't even put an outlet in the town to help the Hollister folk with their economy (the economy being another story entirely!).

Seems a local woman decided to use her own town's name on a small line of her own jeans.

Seems A&F didn't like that.

Now it seems that the whole town is up in arms. They want to reclaim their name and they're publicizing the injustice done them everywhere!

Seems to me that A&F made a whole string of public relations booboos here. Seems to me that A&F should backtrack. Say, "I'm sorry." Hire the Hollister woman to design jeans for them. When the economy does an upturn, put in an outlet and use that magnanimous gesture to glean all kinds of counter publicity. Ahem!

Marketers--that means anyone who has anything to sell from retailers to authors--can learn from the mistakes made by the big guys. Keep a pulse on when your name is being praised and/or taken in vain by using Alerts from Google and others. Have a considered plan before catastrophe strikes. Admit your wrong-doing (if any) immediately and apologize. Fight back immediately when necessary but don't blame others for your booboos.

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This post is based on information from the LA Times, an article written for the business section by Hugo Martin. The blogger is Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of A Retailer's Guide to Frugal In-Store Promotions: How To Increase Profits and Spit in Eyes of Economic Downturns with Thrifty Events and Sales Techniques (www.budurl.com/RetailersGuide) and the multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally series of books including The Frugal Book Promoter (www.budurl.com/FrugalBkPromo) and The Frugal Editor (www.budurl.com/TheFrugalEditor. All are also available on Kindle.

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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:

For the Writing Needs of Retailers

I'm including this review for retailers because these days retailers must be writers, too, what with newsletters, blogging, to say nothing of advertising copy and all the wordcraft they needed in the past.
Title: Great Little Last-Minute Editing Tips for Writers
Author: Carolyn Howard-Johnson
Publisher: HowToDoItFrugally.com
ISBN: 1450507654


Reviewed by Karen Cioffi


What’s more important to a writer than words? Not much . . . maybe how to put words together properly, using correct grammar, weaving them together to create descriptive or informative content . . . but, we still go back to the foundation of every writer’s manuscript or article . . . words.

Carolyn Howard Johnson’s latest book, Great Little Last-Minute Editing Tips for Writers, is a little 55 page book (or e-book) that a writer can refer back to over and over and over to find help with some of the most common word trippers.

In the Before You Get Started section of this book, Howard-Johnson explains, “Great Little Last-Minute Editing Tips for Writers is full of words that are trouble causers. They either sound alike or are spelled similarly. They are not arcane words that you will seldom have an occasion to use. They are not words the writer knows but still mistypes.”
Words such as climactic and climatic used improperly or misspelled can mean a rejection when submitting to the “gatekeepers.” The addition or deletion of that little second “c” makes a huge difference in the meaning of the word.

Or, how about the words: all together / altogether; demur / demure; one in the same / one and the same; and peeked / peaked / piqued. These are just a few of the word trippers added in the Great Little Last-Minute Editing Tips for Writers.
Listed in an A – Z format, the words chosen for this book are thoroughly explained with the aid of examples. This all makes for an easy to understand and easy to read guide. The author also provides two resource sections at the end of the book: Reading: One Editing Book at a Time, and Other Writers’ Aids.
I happen to be a fan of Carolyn Howard-Johnson’s Frugal series and have the Frugal Editor as well as the Frugal Book Promoter. They are a part of my writing and marketing toolkit. The author has done it again with the Great Little Last-Minute Editing Tips for Writers. She has compiled this much needed booklet as an addendum to a list in the appendix of her book, The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success.
I learned a great deal from Great Little Last-Minute Editing Tips for Writers and will be referring to it often; I highly recommend it.


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Reviewed by Karen Cioffi, author, writer-for-hire, freelance writer. She blogs at  http://karenandrobyn.blogspot.com/ and is co-author of Day's End Lullaby. She is the author of The Self-Publisher's Guide, Writing, Publishing, and Marketing - You Can Do It!, and Walking Through Walls - In contract with 4RV Publishing. She also reviews for BookPleasures.com and Muse Book Reviews.
Follow her at http://twitter.com/KarenCV


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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:

Getting Out of the Retail Hum-Drums

As many of you know, I am an advocate of learning more about our businesses and not just from the school of hard knocks (meaning the make-mistakes-and-learn-from-them-syndrome).

My three favorite are networking, the buyer education programs at tradeshows, and books, not necessarily in that order.  Books, in fact, are one of my favorites because, generally, they are a frugal way to keep current and inspired.

 I just received a newsletter from George Whalin and that reminded me to give you some ideas for new books out there. You'll see some wiidgets in this newsletter for some you'll want to buy or get grom the library. A couple are George's

recommendations. The rest are mine.

Just so you know, I'll be at the National Stationery Show this May speaking and signing books with fellow retail speakers and authors like Linda Cahan. Be sure to research the amazing buyer's education program that Debra Gold of Gold & Co. has put together for the show.

I always say, if I can attend a seminar and take home just one great, money-saving idea, I'm ahead of the game and, in many cases, I've paid for my attendance at the show. One year I brought my manager, Susan Polda,  to the California Gift Show. We went to a seminar on gift wrap ideas. It was not only fun, but Susan went back to her store and utilized about a dozen ideas from that presentation, ideas she used for years. I believe the benefits were more far reaching than improving our gift wrap services. I think she went back to Vegas invigorated. I mean, Las Vegas isn't the only place with lots of  glitz and flashing lights, now is 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:

Retailers Gotta Know More About Writing Now They're Blogging

Yay! My new little help for writers is on Amazon in all its chartreuse, red, and yellow glory!

I am on a one-woman campaign to make better writers of my fellow retailers. We often handle our own advertising and now, of course, there is the Web. Newsletters. Blogging. So we need skills beyond the grammar we learned in high school and the test-taking skills we needed in college.

So now, you can now order a copy of this booklet to put in your briefcase and read on the fly! It’s the Great Little Last-Minute Editing Tips for Writers: The Ultimate Frugal Booklet for Avoiding Word Trippers and Crafting Gatekeeper-Perfect Copy.
Notice that this is a booklet. It isn’t intended to be a complete reference for every sneaky homonym in the English language. For one thing there is a nice list of those pesky guys in The Frugal Editor (http://budurl.com/TheFrugalEditor). It’s small partly because it isn’t intended to be drudgery. It’s only 54 pages, so it’s a small, easy-to-read dose of some of the most difficult word trippers, not the ones you learned in the fourth grade. And it is written with a bit of humor to brighten the experience. If you don’t learn anything from it, send it back to me and I’ll refund your money.
Buy the paperback at http://budurl.com/WordTrippersPB. It is only $6.95. You support a friend (me!) and you brush up on skills for your writing career. It's will soon be available for Kindle, too. What could be better than that?


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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:

Quick Marketing Tip--Don't Throw Out What's Great

Everyone would like to know which promotion they're doing works and which doesn't. That rarely happens. Sometimes we think we know and we don't. Recently Pepsi redid its logo. Dan Neil, LA Times marketing expert, laments what they did. He says "It looks like some strange foreign knockoff of Pepsi--Pipse, maybe."

Here's the thing. People are inflexible. You train them to like you, like what you do, like what they see. They can even get attached. When you change things you have to be very careful that 1. what you are discarding truly is no longer working and 2. that what you replace it with doesn't alienate their sensiblities. I mean, poor Dan Neil had his nostalgia button flattened and for no good reason.

He quoted Scott Montgomery as saying "People are running around saying, "Oh my gosh, we've got to do something'...There are all these pressures. Sometimes it's a good thing, if you can make sure you're not throwing away something important. "

Trust me, if a marketing powerhouse like Pepsi (or Coke--remember their Classic Coke fiasco?) can booboo, so can an independent retailer on a small budget.  Often the most frugal approach is to do nothing. Your next consideration is do something, but take it easy. Put your little toesies in the water and see what happens. That's market research if you do it formally. If not, it's just playing it smart the easy way.


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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:

"Collectibles" is Not a Dirty Word

You'll have to pardon my mustiness but I come from a collectible background. Several of my stores included what we called collectibles in their heyday. And before that, I carried antiques (a fancy name for old collectibles) in my Palm Springs store.

I advocate looking at collectibles in a different light in A Retailer's Guide to Frugal In-Store Promotions (www.budurl.com/RetilersGuide) and did so when I was writing a column for Home Decor magazine. Imagine my delight when Nancy Gibbs of Time magazine fame wrote about the rush for election souveniers. Given a little time she may write about the rush for Olympics souvenirs.

When I talked about them I mentioned that we were originally gatherers--long before we were hunters. I even ventured that we are genetically coded for collecting. Then Gibbs mentioned that her kids are natural curators (a fancy word for collecting judiciously) including stuff from Happy Meals. And, lo! She remembered that Freud's theory "had to do with toilet training and the trauma of relinquishing a part of oneself."

So, now, are you retailers going to trust me to take a look at collectibles again? We want people to want more than one, right? Retailers of shoes have built-in collecitbles. We women gotta have our Keds, and boots, and house slippers and sandals.

So what fits with your product mix that is collectible? No you don't have to call them "collectible," but if you stock some, you're sure to turn a profit.
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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:

Opening Salvo: Great Marketing Begins with a Acknowledgement

This is my first post on Survive and Thrive for Retailers and I thought I'd start with wisdom from Seth Godin. You may or may not know him but recently he posted "Win the Fight, Lose The Customer" on  his blog and it so nicely fit with a professional marketing stance for retailers, I thought I'd begin with it. It is sort of an affirmation or a mantra to say yourself (or to your customer) whether you think the customer is right or wrong but it's especially good if you're convinced he or she is wrong.  It goes like this:

"I have no problem acknowledging that you're unhappy, upset, or even angy. Nex time, I'd prefer to organize our interaction so you don't end up feeling that way, and I probably could have done it this time, too. You have my attention and my empathy and I value you. Thanks for being here."

You can, of course, frame this in language you feel comfortable with, but the essentials are all there.

There are occasions when one doesn't want a customer back. I may discuss those rare instances in a future blog. But in my nearly 30 years as founder and operator of my own stores, I found only two of them. I admit I'm a patient person.

Whether one is patient or not, Seth's appoach is a valid one. Who is right is rarely the point. The point is, how customer or client and provider can get past the incident and move in a positive direction. In other words, reach for a win-win.  This same approach can be used by vendors when dealing with their retailers.

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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:

Exicitng (OK, USEFUL! ) Retail Stuff On Its Way

This site is under construction. Please feel free to subscribe (see the follow link on the right) so you won't miss any retail tips once I get started. (-:

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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 receive help with the 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: