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What a Trade Show Can Teach Us About Good Marketing

Trade shows function like temporary cities, bringing buyers, sellers, education, marketing, and operations into one shared space. When they work, alignment is visible. When they don’t, misalignment is just as clear. This article uses trade shows as an analogy for B2B marketing, exploring what happens when organizations lose focus on their primary customer, how drift happens quietly, and what it takes to restore clarity and long-term value.
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First Things First: There's an Order to Profitability

The building blocks of profitability are clear and they even have a required sequence to them. But without knowledge of the building blocks - or awareness that these building blocks even exist! - your marketing can underperform for years (or decades).
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Principles of Graphic Design

Most small business owners are doing a lot of graphic designs themselves. But without understanding graphic design principles what you save in time and fees will cost you in results. This 36-minute video will help you understand the basic principles of graphic design. Whether you are doing your own graphics or working with a graphic designer understanding these concepts will most certainly improve your marketing efforts.
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Radical Inclusiveness - the Competitive Edge

In a business climate where competitiveness and innovation are everything equality and diversity in the workforce are important keys to success.
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Outstanding Customer Service is a Culture Thing

The question of how to deliver the outstanding customer service consumers expect is easy to answer but harder to implement.
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    Reflections
    Follow Reflections
    Ethics

    What is Fairtrade? Fairmined?

    People often confuse Fairmined and Fairtrade. Here's a simple guideline to help you sort them out.
    Merchandising

    Are You a Great Merchant or Just Shopping?

    Every product category must evolve to stay relevant. Great merchants are masters of product evolution.
    Marketing

    When advertising, don't start in the middle!

    Promotional design does not have to be so difficult. The most important thing a business owner can do to ensure quality promotions is to develop descriptions for the following eight characteristics.
    Retail

    In it to win it: Don't let generic retailers and pricing models drag you off your designer strategy

    You already know being in business for yourself is hard work. But working this hard for no money? Differentiate.
    Branding

    Everything You Know About Luxury Has Changed

    Millennials are changing everything we know about luxury. Here are 5 key areas your luxury business must master to stay relevant.
    Leadership

    Reflection on Influence and Character

    Is buffering our children from social influences wrong? How is a liberal social thinker similar to a religious fundamentalist in regard to home schooling?
    Management

    Surviving Tough Times: Part I

    The Jewelry Design Professionals’ Network (JDPN) invited Andrea Hill to prepare two presentations for their members and students, to help them manage their careers and business during the Covid-19 crisis.
    Management

    Are You Writing Your Own Obituary?

    The bottom line is that the jewelry industry is going to be fine. But retailers and small manufacturers need to ask of themselves a few vital questions.

    Tell Better Stories

    It's not enough to sell a product or a service any more. You must also be able to tell the story. The Pip Storytelling Deck is a tool we use at the Werx Brands to construct and tell better stories. You can be a master story-teller too!

    Order Yours Today
    Management

    Be a Better Leader Part 5: Be the Brand Builder

    Strong brands are a direct reflection of strong leadership. Embrace your role as the primary brand builder for your organization.
    Management

    Past Time for Change - A Post to the Jewelry Industry

    A business living on auto-pilot ultimately dies of its own apathy. In business, every time is a time for change, and change is the only way to grow.
    Management

    It's Just Conflict

    Conflict has value. Any alliance without an occasional clash of diverging ideas will be as satisfying as a diet of chicken broth or a dip in a tepid bath.
    Management

    There’s No Pink Pill For This

    We may be in the grip of a virulent form of mass business codependence.
    Management

    That cash won't hatch! Don't let your strategic players just sit on it.

    Managing a business through recession is all about cash flow. Keep in mind the entire system when you try to figure out who is sitting on your cash.
    Management

    Would You Benefit From a Team-Based Business Model?

    If you have been looking for a way to help your organization move faster, get ahead of your competition, and produce higher quality, a team-based structure could be the approach you’ve been searching for.
    Management

    Give Better Feedback - Get Better Results

    If business is about continuous improvement, then people must be continuously improving too. Giving better feedback will help your business improve.
    Management

    Surviving Tough Times: Part I

    The Jewelry Design Professionals’ Network (JDPN) invited Andrea Hill to prepare two presentations for their members and students, to help them manage their careers and business during the Covid-19 crisis.
    Management

    We Are Our Own Tragic Villains

    Too often, rationalizing is an unhappy accident that leads to loss of market share, loss of profit margin, loss of jobs, and loss of a business. Unintended consequences are expensive.

    Video

    Check Out Our Youtube Channel!

    Go to our Youtube channel and pound that SUBSCRIBE button!

    We post a lot of videos: business educational, inspirational, motivational, and even lots of software/technical. You don't want to miss it, so subscribe to our Youtube channel today, and get alerts when we post new content.

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    jewelry industry, supply chain

    marketing

    branding, selling

    ethics, personal development

    marketing, management

    Strategy

    Branding

    Hmm . . . my favorite new term-of-the-week: Ratlicker
    "A person who refuses to wear a mask, or take any of the basic precautions to help society prevent an air born illness during an epidemic. ( In reference to the bubonic plague being spread by rats. )"

    At the end of the day, we all have to fight our demons alone. And I think that's the source of loneliness. If you spend your whole life insisting there are no demons to fight or hiding your demons or determined to fight them in private, you end up existentially alone.

    I sometimes wonder what our country would be like today if Christians had thrown themselves into eradicating poverty or inequality with the same energy they invested in fighting abortion.

    "The tricky thing about hope is to not confuse it with optimism." Rebecca Solnit

    Perfectionism is a luxury for (starving) artists, or artists with benefactors. The rest of us must learn the difference between being in love with our own ideas and being in love with progress.

    Well, Catholics pray to saints," I mutter to myself as I begin my nightly prayer to RBG.

    Society and Culture

    Follow Social Articles

    Trump Defined

    Zero Sum Gamers and the Covid-19 Moment

    NASCAR for Politicos

    Now, Let's Really Go, Joe. I'm hopeful.

    Be the Change. Every Two Years.

    Wet With Fear? Perhaps.

    Education 3.0

    What? No Garden?

    When Leadership is Lacking, Nothing Else Matters

    Pop Gossip and Bloated Self Esteem