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3 Reasons You Need to be on Pinterest

February 3, 2012 By 4 Comments

Surely you have heard of Pinterst by now. Pinterest is an invitation only site  (but invitations are easy to come by) where people curate images.

 

The number one reason you should be on Pinterest

is because your brides are.

Pinterest has replaced the binder full of pictures. Don’t be surprised to have brides waltz into your shop, pop out their iPad and start showing you their pins. You want them to be pinning your work! You can upload your images or just pin images of your work that others have posted.

Number 2. There is no better way to know what trends1 are rising then to keep up with what brides are pinning. Follow brides in your market and around the world. You will quickly see what is catching their eye.

Number 3. It gets your creative juices flowing. One idea leads to another. Don’t be afraid to pin the work of others. Brides will get a good idea of your taste and that helps them choose you.

 

FYI Pinterest is also the biggest time sink going right now, so be forewarned. You really should  follow my boards.

1 Top trends I am seeing, ombre cakes and it seems every other bride is in love with chuphas and mandaps, regardless of their religion.

Filed Under: Trends, What Brides Say, What's Hot Tagged With: , ,

Websites for Ecommerce

January 14, 2012 By Leave a Comment

 

Last week I asked if you thought Ecommerce was something you should explore.

Today I want you to have a look at 2 sites that I think are great examples of how you, a wedding vendor can do it right. First off, let’s get one thing straight, I am not saying that I think you should abandon your current business and try to recreate Amazon. Nope, not by a long shot.

The 2 sites I want you to look at combine many of the things I have been talking about for years, personal branding, niche marketing, becoming an expert in your field, giving people a reason to return to your site and, oh by the way, selling a ton of stuff!

Enough suspense!

Rachel Ray

Whether you love her of hate her, she knows how to do it. If you will notice, her site is all about information, recipes and tips, guest bloggers and show news. 1001 ways for the site to be found in search and as many reasons for visitors to keep returning.  It does a very good job of establishing her authority and making you trust and like her. Her ecommerce play comes across as helpful rather than pushy. On each recipe is a box listing products from her shop that would be useful in that recipe. She has already earned your trust, of course you are going to buy what she recommends.

 

Micheal Chiarello

You may or may not know who Micheal Chiarello is, he does have a few cooking shows but unlike Ray, he never really rose to stardom on the FoodTV roster. His shows are more about publicizing his already existing brand.

His website is more pure ecommerce but he still uses the same tools; recipes, commentary and tips. (all things you could be using in your site)

How  does this help you?

If you have been listening, I keep encouraging you to find ways to leverage what you already do and are known for to increase your bottom line. Like the florist that that started increasing her stock of cool vintage props and started pushing their rental. Like the planners that have started marketing the custom invitations, signs and decor pieces they were already creating for their clients anyway. Like the cantor that was doing weddings and found a whole new market doing the classes for Bar/Bat mitzvahs. Like the officiant in the Caribbean that doesn’t wait for people to find her, she connects with the cruise ships to plan weddings for their passengers on layovers on her island. Like the catering hall that is ubër successful with Murder Mystery Dinner Theater on Friday nights.

There now, I have given you some ideas and I have shown you how to do it well.

Go take a few days off and let it all roll around in your brain.  What do you do that you can leverage.?

When you figure it out, I want to know, so leave me some comments.

 

 

 

 

Filed Under: Ask Christine, Ecommerce, Trends, Website Design Tagged With: , ,

Is E-commerce Something You Could Do?

January 6, 2012 By 1 Comment

I am seeing the twinkling of a trend among small independent wedding vendors. E-commerce is beginning to come into play more and more as either an additional service or product or a full on pure play. Monday I’ll start my third E-commerce site in the last 2 months.shopping carts and ecommerce for wedding vendors

How, you ask, are wedding vendors using Ecommerce? They are using it in a variety of ways. I’m not going to give away their ideas, but I can tell you that it runs the gambit from hand-crafted products, to personalized design services to gift cards.

This all ties into what I have been saying about really thinking about what makes you unique and how you can use that to enlarge both your offerings and your niche.

Capitalize on your reputation to expand your business.

Think about what you can pre-package, so to speak. Suppose I were still baking. Now my wedding cakes were all one of a kind designs and not something I could have sold on the internet, but my hand made truffles would have worked. For that matter, if I had really wanted to go for it, I could have sold just the designs, cake blue prints, if you like. Brides could have then taken them to their auntie or local baker to bake and decorate.  Do you see where I am going with this?

Put on your thinking cap and go for a walk outside the box. 

One of the amazing things about the internet, is that you can try these kinds of things out relatively cheaply. Put a page on your site with your products and a simple shopping cart for a small investment. If it works, then you can think about really investing in it. If it doesn’t, take down the page off your site and you are out a couple of hundred buck, tops.

Next week, I’m going to take you on a tour of what I think are a couple of the best sites to emulate to market both your current business and an eCommerce play.

 

 

 

Filed Under: Ask Christine, Blog, Building Your Business, Trends, Website Design, What's Hot Tagged With: , , ,

The Year That Was: 2011

December 28, 2011 By Leave a Comment

As I sit here and watch the sun slowly set on 2011 I was reflecting on what an interesting year it had been. There have been some radical upheavals in the industry and some small sparks of life.

Get Married Folded

Priscilla’s of Boston Folded

Encore Invitation left brides high and dry.

The Knot got downgraded.

Wedding business advice has seemingly become an industry of it’s own.

The bloggers and the photographer feuded.

…and the list goes on.

Those little sparks of hope?

It isn’t those people that are coming into the market thinking they are going to make 6-figures as a planner; it’s the small handcrafted mavens that jumped in with out a playbook. Not the ones that brought all their corporate speak and think; it’s the ones with passion and heartfelt joy for what they do. It isn’t the ones that are crying for the world to go back to the way it was; it’s the ones that saw the big picture and changed with the times.

I have seen so many success stories this year and they have all been from folks that are willing to think outside the box, break a few rules and change. Either they stopped looking at weddings through the lens of 2008 or they never had that lens in the first place.

Much like our economy, our industry has a huge gap in the middle. The very big have enough of a cushion that they are succeeding as they slowly turn their great ships around  and the very small are creating a new craftsman sector of the industry. One built on customer service, quality and a vision of weddings as special moments not spectacles.

It’s kind of refreshing.

 

Filed Under: Blog, Rants & Raves, Trends Tagged With: , , , , ,

Get Married Folds. What’s Next?

December 1, 2011 By 6 Comments

All the buzz yesterday in the Wedding Water Cooler was about the demise of Get Married. According to their press release, the once promising platform will cease operation on December 16th, 2011.

When they first hit the scene, it looked like a winning idea; the marriage of print, online and TV. Sadly, they never got the kind of support from TV that was needed.  Web TV is still in it’s infancy and didn’t come fast enough for the folks at Get Married. They needed big backing from networks like Bravo or Lifetime and it didn’t come. Now whether that was a money thing or the programming they were producing just wasn’t that good, it was still a fail. Without the TV component being big, really big, Get Married was just another national wedding portal. Yawn.

Another nail in their coffin was the deal with Taylor Corporation. While I’m sure it brought a much needed cash infusion, it came at a price. The magazine became little more than a catalog for Taylor’s products. That was a slap in the face of any small local advertiser that Get Married hoped to attract. It also brought the unwanted problem of corporate masters. As long as Get Married retained it’s independence, it could remain nimble. Not so much with old school corporate investors breathing down your neck every quarter.

In short, another one bites the dust.

There was much discussion yesterday about whose next on the chopping block.  Here is how I see it:

The big boys aren’t going anywhere. Oh they may hunker down, shrink and layoff some folks, but I don’t see them folding. For instance, I can’t see Conde Nast folding their one remaining bridal title. David’s and the Knot have enough cash to ride out the economic storm for a while longer. They are the exceptions. What I don’t see them doing is gobbling up the small competitors as they start to devalue. Get Married tried that and no one was buying.

 

Here are the losers:

The Gajillion small websites that thought they could be the next Knot. National portals are dead and they are going to start folding quietly but at an amazing rate.

You will probably see more closings along the line of Encore Studios. I don’t just mean in the invitation business, but bloated, old-school thinkers that deal in volume rather than service. This group may or may not include some more bridal gown manufacturers.

I think a large percentage of the folks that rushed into the bridal world when they lost their corporate gigs or graduated university and couldn’t find a job will give up. It isn’t the “paved in gold”  party all the time, recession proof industry they thought it was.

What does this mean for we that remain? Hunker down, market local, build your own online presence and sit back and watch. It’s gonna be fun!

Filed Under: Ask Christine, Horror Stories, Trends Tagged With: , ,

The Encore Invitation Debacle

October 24, 2011 By 3 Comments

Have you been following the Encore Invitations bankruptcy story? Paul Panonne has been doing a great job on it on his website eWedNewz.com. 

While Paul reports the news, my role is analysis and here is my take on this whole mess.

If you have been watching the trends, DIY is huge and invitations and the entire paper suite are at the top of the list.  Additionally, more and more couples that are having them professionally done are opting for one of a kind, hand crafted invitations from artists like Michelle  Mospens.

My feeling is that as word of the Encore failure and the deplorable way they handled it filters down to the consumer the net effect will be to drive more and more brides away from the large traditional invitation companies and into the waiting arms of the hand-craftsman. Whether those hands are their own or those of a professional artisan.

And why not?

Brides today are hell bent on as much personalization as possible. This is just going to increase an already hot trend.

Let’s take it a step further. If you add this mess to other things like Priscilla’s of Boston and countless other closings, you begin to see a picture being painted for today’s brides that leaves them fearful of ordering anything. They want it in their hand, or they want to find a small, reputable craftsman that cares about what they create that they can build a relationship of trust with.

If you are one of these small craftsman, as am I, now is your time to shine. Build trust, build relationships, show them that you aren’t some large corporate entity that sees business only in spreadsheets and ignores the human quotient.

Filed Under: Ask Christine, Horror Stories, Trends Tagged With: ,

Of Fairy Dust and Pretty Pink Unicorns

September 13, 2011 By 3 Comments

I had lunch yesterday with friend of Think, Ashley King of Ashley’s Bride Guide.  Much of the conversation revolved around Fairy Dust and Pink Unicorns. It’s really scary how much Ashley and I think alike.

First up, Fairy Dust.

All you need to do is advertise with me and you will have all the brides you want.

You hear this from just about every sales rep you meet.  They know your marketing budget is small and they want all of it.  Sadly, you also hear it from the talking heads that represent the major players like the Knot and Wedding Wire. The truth is that no one place is going to do it for you, you have to spread your exposure out as well as you can and have it all point to the one place you truly control: your website.

All you need is a Facebook page.

No, again your Facebook page is just a sign post to your website. If you post all your content on Facebook they have no reason to go to your site and all that traffic goes to Facebook, not you. Facebook is important, don’t get me wrong, but it is only a piece of the puzzle

The Wedding industry is recession proof.

Wrong. While it is true that people will keep getting married, even that is less true than it used to be. There as been so much written about this, including a lot of it on Think, that I won’t bore you with it. Beyond that, the amount that couples spend is directly effected by the economy. When people are struggling to pay their mortgage and put gas in their car they aren’t going to spend $500 on a custom aisle runner or card box. They are going back to basics, back to what matters.

If you offer low end alternatives no one will buy your high end offerings.

Really? Nothing could be farther from the truth. Why would you purposely leave money on the table? More importantly, if you give budget brides a gateway into your offerings if they find extra money they may well buy your higher priced items.

 

Pink Unicorns

It was interesting that it isn’t only me that hears the constant cry of, “I only want to do luxury weddings.” ~sigh~

Long before I started writing on this public blog, back in the days when Think was subscription only, I began trying to dispel this myth. Yes there are some really high end weddings in America, but no where near enough to support every vendor that is chasing them. Yes the weddings that brides see in the major blogs tend to be high end.  Yes, a large group of brides want a Style Me Pretty wedding but not many can afford it. The problem is that when it comes time to write the check to make those weddings happen, very few (and shrinking) can actually ante up. When faced with the cost, most regroup and back way down.

Here is one more point you may want to consider. The really high end weddings, a quarter of a million and up, are being planned and designed by the people that have been planning and designing for that family or peer group for years. Not someone they found on the web.

“Wait! ” you say, “I want the $100,000 to $200,000 weddings.”  That market, the upper middle class, is the one that is shrinking faster that all others.

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal was addressing how giant Proctor and Gamble is restructuring to match the new realities and had this little tidbit.

In the wake of the worst recession in 50 years, there’s little doubt that the American middle class—the 40% of households with annual incomes between $50,000 and $140,000 a year—is in distress. Even before the recession, incomes of American middle-class families weren’t keeping up with inflation, especially with the rising costs of what are considered the essential ingredients of middle-class life—college education, health care and housing. In 2009, the income of the median family, the one smack in the middle of the middle, was lower, adjusted for inflation, than in 1998, the Census Bureau says.

The slumping stock market and collapse in housing prices have also hit middle-class Americans. At the end of March, Americans had $6.1 trillion in equity in their houses—the value of the house minus mortgages—half the 2006 level, according to the Federal Reserve. Economist Edward Wolff of New York University estimates that the net worth—household assets minus debts—of the middle fifth of American households grew by 2.4% a year between 2001 and 2007 and plunged by 26.2% in the following two years.

P&G isn’t the only company adjusting its business. A wide swath of American companies is convinced that the consumer market is bifurcating into high and low ends and eroding in the middle. They have begun to alter the way they research, develop and market their products.

Does that last sentence remind you of any high end wedding gown designer? It should, it’s exactly what Vera Wang is doing.

So what does this mean to you?

It certainly doesn’t mean you should give up, I am not trying to spout doom and gloom. It means that you may need to rethink your goals in light of what is really going on with your target market. Is there a way that you can offer some product to the lower end bride?  It is really smart to put all your marketing drive into getting a market that is evaporating?  There is money out there to be made, it just may not be where it used to be.

 

 

Filed Under: Back to Basics, Inspiration, Trends Tagged With: , , ,

The Final Nail in the Knot’s Coffin

September 9, 2011 By 2 Comments

I have said it for so long that I am blue in the face:

The portals are dead and Google killed them.

Yet year after year, so many wedding vendors throw money at the Knot for ads that aren’t working. They throw money at Wedding Wire and every little portal website that comes along. Then they wonder why they aren’t getting any return on their investment. ~gah~

There was a time when the Knot really was a place for brides to go to get the information and inspiration that they needed. Today? uh, no. Why would they sort through pages of nonsense when all the have to do is Google exactly what they are looking for and get pages of very specific related answers. Even better, pages of images.

Finally I have back up. Today the Motley Fool picked XO Group(formerly the Knot) as their “Throw This Stock Away” pick of the week.  Below is the best quote of the article:

XO in general — and The Knot in particular — just aren’t as necessary as they used to be. Friends swap wedding service referrals for free through Facebook, and Angie’s List has grown into a powerhouse of vetted reviews.

Brides today are going to go where they already feel comfortable.

Now take a look at this quote about a stock they would pick to replace XO Group.

  • Google: XO relies on wedding service providers paying up to be featured on TheKnot.com. Despite all of the lifestyle site launches and acquisitions over the past four years, revenue has climbed just 22% higher at XO. Where are the advertisers going? My best bet would be Google. The search giant’s AdWords platform makes it easy to smoke out leads for pennies per click. It’s also hard to argue against Google at less than 13 times next year’s earnings.

I hate to leave you hanging at the altar XO, but I’m just not that into you.

What does all this mean to you?

In a nutshell, brides are finding information by searching on Google. If your website isn’t top notch and built to be search friendly, no amount of money you throw at advertising is going to do you any good.

Remember when I said “In 2008 we hit the reset button?’ Well this is one of the things that has changed. Ignore it at your own peril.

Oh and one more thing. If you own any stock in XO, I’d probably take the Fool’s advice.

Filed Under: Blog, Rants & Raves, Trends, Website marketing Tagged With: , ,

Some Companies Get It, Some Don’t.

September 1, 2011 By 2 Comments

One of the keys to continuing to be successful in business through the ups and downs of culture changes and economic upheaval is to stay focused on what your customer wants. Customers evolve with time, businesses have to as well.

Two very different articles crossed my path this morning and they highlight this better than anything I could do or say to convince you.

(Essdras M Suarez/Globe Staff)

 

First was an article in the Boston Globe talking about David’s Bridal’s decision to close their Priscilla’s of Boston division. Started in 1945, Priscilla’s was the epitome of high end gowns for many, many years. It salons were upscale, gorgeous and exclusive. The purchase of Priscilla’s by David’s in 2007 was their attempt to tap that market at the height of the wedding bubble. Unfortunately, the bubble burst, the economy tanked and the culture changed but the business model didn’t. The market for high end gowns sold in a slow paced pampering environment all but dried up.

This quote in the article from Yolanda Cellucci, once the reigning queen of the high end bridal salon says it all

“I used to carry Bob Mackie wedding dresses that cost up to $25,000,’’ Cellucci said. “We had a baby grand piano in the foyer with a pianist. There were models, and we served champagne. People don’t have time for that anymore. Everyone is rushing.’’

Cellucci saw the writing on the wall and closed her famous Boston salon 2 years ago. This was a woman that was smart enough to have an ATM installed in her parking lot. She never missed a trick.

David’s, also a very savvy player, hooked up with Vera Wang to go the other direction. Wang’s moderately priced line for David’s, White has reportedly been a tremendous hit. Know thy customer!

On the other end of the spectrum is Chicago’s House of Brides. I have listened for years to bridal salon owners call HoB every nasty name in the book because they saw the writing on the wall and opened an online store in addition to their brick and mortar operation. Originally opened in 1929, HoB could have continued to plug along with one little store but they jumped online and stayed ahead of the curve.

Today’s press release announced the opening of their 10th store, The Quinceanera Boutique . Something else that the article highlighted was it’s Diva Bridal Boutique, a shop exclusively for Plus size brides.

The Diva Bridal Boutique is the first salon in the nation dedicated to plus size brides. The Diva Bridal Boutique showcases fashion-forward designer wedding dresses exclusively in sizes 18 – 40. All wedding dresses are available in Women’s sizes only including the samples. Plus size brides can try-on dresses in Women’s sizes instead of the industry’s standard sample sizes of 10s and 12s. Diva Bridal Boutique features dresses available for immediate purchase or special order.

Talk about listening to your customer and giving them what they want.

Now you tell me, is it better to continue to do what has worked in the past or to continue to evolve as your customers do?

Filed Under: Back to Basics, Blog, Building Your Business, Trends Tagged With: , ,

The Changing Face of The American Wedding

June 29, 2011 By 1 Comment

I set out this morning with the intention of doing one of my Trend Tracker post. You know, where I run through about 1000 posts in my reader quickly to see what jumps out. Well today, what jumped out was a little deeper than colors and feathers, circuses and painted signs.

What jumped out was a different way of thinking about weddings, to be more precise, how couples are thinking differently about their wedding.

There seems to be a feeling or yearning for the small town, tight knit community of family and friends. Gone is the urban chic. Even the Mad Men look was no where to be found. I felt transported to a time and place when life was simpler. A time of picnics in the town square, concerts in the band shell, carnivals that appeared magically on the outskirts of town, a time of farmhouses and faded picket fences.

I saw more and more of families pitching in to help the couple realize their dreams. Think of the new American wedding as a modern day barn raising.

If you will notice, I used the word ‘couple ‘ in the 4th sentence instead of ‘bride’. That is another change that is just beginning to emerge. Because weddings are increasingly being financed by the couple, the men are becoming more involved and to a lesser degree, more excited by the wedding planning process.

I have long maintained that more and more, brides are getting their information from blogs, chat and forums. I ran across an interesting thread that helps to explain why. There are several pages to this thread, but this one statement tell the story better than I ever could. Mainstream wedding media, pay attention.

Shortly after getting engaged, a recently married co-worker suggesting I check out Weddingbee. She said of all the wedding websites, Weddingbee was her favorite as it followed real brides on real budgets. (emphasis mine)

Two more  interesting threads concerns the desire of some brides to blow off the fluff and pouf altogether. The first is from Weddingbee and illustrates that despite their desires, brides were into full on planning mode due to pressure from not only their families but also the groom.  In the second thread the Tribe Community manager for OffBeat Bride explains that she really isn’t all that OffBeat. This quote explains why she wasn’t a fit for traditional wedding media:

I don’t do the poetic schmoopy thing very well, but to ME, being offbeat is putting your marriage and relationship ahead of your wedding and being true to the people you are every day. It means that your wedding (ie: a party) exists to honor the two of you, and to celebrate you choosing to spend the rest of your lives together with the people you adore. It’s not a showcase of wealth and taste, carefully tailored to inspire envy, covetousness, and awe in as many people as possible … it’s a showcase of your love

Well said Ang.

More and more I see the face of the American wedding changing in some very positive ways. Oh maybe not positive for the wedding professionals that still yearn for the “More is better” heyday of  2008; but a big plus for our society and for the vendors that change and adapt with it.

 

Oh ya, the Trend Tracker

 

Colors are softer, dresses are softer, finishes are softer, it is like the world is looking at wedding by squinting.

 

 

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Filed Under: Announcement, Trends, What Brides Say, What's Hot Tagged With:
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