45 search results for “Humayun Khan”

Customer service isn't just what your business does after the sale in the form of addressing a support call or doing an exchange or issuing a refund, it's the-end to-end experience a customer has with all the touch points of your business. 

Whether you sell online, in-store, or anywhere in-between, placing an emphasis on making exceptional customer service a core component or a foundational value for your business, will change your outlook on why it is you do what you do. 

It will remind you of your reasons for starting your business in the first place, how your business adds value to the lives of your target customers, and why when it comes to the overall customer experience, there's always room for improvement.

To help you gain further insight into the importance of customer service, I've assembled eight quotes from some of the most brilliant thinkers and doers so that you too can gauge the state of customers today and how it is you might be able to serve them better tomorrow. 

Enjoy! 

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Pop-up shops are the Snapchat of retail, most of their magic comes from their temporary and "get-it-while-it-lasts" nature. 

In fact, according to Specialty Retail, pop-ups are expected to be a $8 billion a year industry, and has everyone from Warby Parker to popular boy band One Direction trying to get in on the action.

Not only can the location of a pop-up vary but brands use them for a wide array of purposes, from creating an unforgettable and branded experience for consumers that generate buzz and brand awareness, to quickly testing and experimenting in what used to be costly retail waters. In essence, pop-ups are transforming the way we shop.

Over the last few months, we've been busy creating resources to help merchants who might have only sold exclusively online to consider thinking about pop-ups shops as another sales channel. From picking and negotiating the perfect location, designing the store interior and displays, to marketing and evaluating your success, we hope to provide everything you'll need to get started.

Regardless of whether you're considering your first pop-up or have a few under your belt, here are eight reasons why every ecommerce merchant should consider giving pop-up shops a chance.

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When Marc Jacobs, J.Hilburn, or Prince of Scots want to create a unique pop-up experience for their customers, they turn to none other than Melissa Gonzalez from the Lion'esque Group to guide them through concept to execution. 

Not only has she helped create more than 70 pop-up retail experiences in New York City, Los Angeles and the Hamptons, she also sits on the board of advisors for the Storefront, a pop-up space marketplace, and is a co-founder of The Market, a pop-up retail and branding program.

For her work in helping create such outstanding pop-up experiences, Marc Jacobs was honored with the CLIO Image Award for experiential engagement, and J.Hilburn was recognized as a finalist for the New York Design Award for marketing and branded experiences. 

Clearly, she's a busy woman. But, we've been lucky to have her share her insights from the field in the form of blog posts spanning topics like how to plan a pop-up and designing immersive retail experiences all the way to case studies from merchants she's personally worked with. 

Today, however, we're excited to launch our new video series "How to Create a Successful Pop-Up Shop" featuring Melissa, where she breaks down everything you need to know to create an unforgettable temporary retail experience for your brand. 

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What exactly does it take to conceptualize, open, run, and promote a successful retail store? Chances are if you've ever looked into it, you'll know that it's a pretty large undertaking, with very few shortcuts for those who've never done it before. 

There's also plenty of rookie mistakes that not only end up costing a fortune but could derail the entire operation.

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As a small business owner, you might have a mix of channels you sell through, some online and some offline. Your online presence might include having an ecommerce store with Shopify, or selling through marketplaces like eBay, Etsy or Amazon. In the physical world, you might own your own boutique retail store, or maybe you go to a few trade shows, sell through craft fairs and maybe sometimes you get a booth at a farmer's market.

However, one thing that's been missing for smaller retailers was the ability to bring everything together into a single omni-channel retail strategy. Rightfully so, given the technology up until now was privy only to household brands who could afford it. 

Despite that, things are beginning to change and the same integrated technology is now more accessible than ever to smaller merchants. For example, today a Shopify merchant can have a single dashboard for their inventory, sales, and customer information, while simultaneously being able to sell online, offline, and quite literally anywhere in between. 

It's also the reason why having merchants obtain a better understanding of omni-channel marketing is so important to us, which is why I've curated 10 presentations from Slideshare to deepen your understanding of how larger brands are leveraging their omnipresence to meet their customer's needs and how you can start thinking about doing the same. 

Let's get started.

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For both consumers and retailers alike, the digital divide between the online and the offline world of commerce are collapsing. Out of the rubble, a new future is emerging, one in which consumers expect to seamlessly choose between making a purchase online, in-store, or frankly wherever they find themselves.

As merchants shuffle to reorganize themselves, one trend that becomes more and more apparent and shows no signs of disappearing is the pop-up shop. With the appeal of a temporary rental agreement, the possibility of creating highly engaging and targeted experiences, and customers who jump at the idea of something exclusive, pop-up shops are the new cool kids on the retail block.

Pop-up shops provide online retailers a low-cost and highly-effective sales channel that not only increases brand awareness, but provides a means to get a taste of conducting business face-to-face and reap the advantages of observing customer reactions to products and quickly soliciting their feedback. But, if you’ve only ever sold online, where do you even start?

Luckily, we know how hard it can be to get your feet wet with physical retail when you’ve only sold online, which is why over the past few months, we’ve provided extensive resources around getting started and finding success with pop-ups.

Today, we’re proud to announce an even more extensive resource with the launch of “The Ultimate Guide to Pop-Up Shops.”

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What happens when you get a pair of Wall Street investment bankers who love their custom shirts, hate the everyday in-store shopping experience and want to start their own menswear line? 

Well, the short answer is J.Hilburn, the wildly popular and successful retailer that has managed to bridge the online and offline experience for its customers and who shows no signs of slowing down.

Founded in 2007 by Hill Davis and Veeral Rathod, the company today has a network of over 3,000 personal stylists in over 40 states that personally meet with individual customers to take their measurements and allow them to place orders for shirts, trousers, and jackets online made with the finest Italian fabrics and available at affordable prices.

Men can also choose from a wide range of accessories that include everything from pocket squares to cashmere sweaters and more.

Looking to experiment with the idea of creating a retail experience in the heart of SoHo, New York, J.Hilburn sought to bring its brand offline through a pop-up shop.

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That’s right, the hottest and fastest growing ecommerce companies are all thinking past selling strictly online and are all moving towards integrating some variation of physical retail.

Which also means they’re rethinking the traditional divide between offline and online and venturing into omni-channel retail.

In fact, when you take things into consideration, despite the fact that ecommerce sales grew 5 percent to roughly $65 billion in 2013, it's still a sliver of total retail sales. Actually, we're talking less than a sliver, more like only 5.8 percent out of a $1,126.2 billion market just in the U.S. alone. So, isn't it time you started thinking about the world of offline selling?

This post will walk you through what Bonobos, Warby Parker and Indochino, three of the biggest ecommerce brands, have been attempting recently with physical retail - along with their future outlook on where commerce is going. So when the time comes to grow your online store through moving offline, you’ll know how the best did it and how you can start doing it too. 

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Here's something you may be wondering about: If you've already optimized your website for search engines, why do you have to optimize it again for local SEO? According to Local SEO expert David Mihm's Local Search Ranking Factors, properly optimizing your website could account for as much as 18% of what Google weighs inits algorithm when determining which local results to serve up to users.

With as many as 7 billion monthly local searches in the US alone, consumers are searching for business addresses, products, hours of operations, driving directions, reviews, and coupons they can use at your establishment. 

With local search becoming more and more important for small businesses (and Google as rumored by its upcoming algorithm change), it's important for merchants to understand not only the basics of Local SEO, but what it consists of.

This includes building citations, leveraging online reviews, and what we'll cover in this post, on-site optimization for increasing chances of ranking higher in local search results. 

Let's get started.

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As a retailer, it's not always easy to just throw money at problems like shoplifting or loss prevention. With a finite budget, many smaller retailers can't take advantage of all the technology that big-box stores may have at their fingertips. Whether it's high-tech security camera systems, door scanners, or facial-recognition software, sometimes their big-ticket costs just don't fit with your small business security budget.

But shoplifting can have a crippling effect on retailers — after all, inventory shrinkage costs the U.S. retail industry over $45 billion each year. So, while you may have a limited budget, it's important to identify shoplifting as a problem and have a loss prevention plan in place.

So, what's a retailer to do? Here, we'll take a look at cost-effective and low-tech tactics that you can start implementing right away.

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