Company

It's 8:45 AM and our Uber driver weaves through morning rush hour traffic. It’s overcast when we arrive at Jelly Modern to pick up nine boxes of assorted donuts topped and stuffed and slathered with impossible flavours like Madagascar Bourbon Vanilla and Lemon Curd.

To the naked eye, it's just another Friday in Toronto, but for retailers here (and all over North America) this is the Friday. Black Friday, to be exact. Our mission: uncover the story of independent merchants on the busiest shopping day of the year. Our weapon: carbs.

When you think of Alaska, usually you think of pristine landscapes, ice-capped mountain tops and grizzly bears.

But there's another important cultural element that has taken hold in America's far north that you might be surprised to learn about - an emerging hip-hop movement.

A key player in this movement is Travis Brady – a hip-hop producer and entrepreneur from Anchorage, Alaska.

Brady’s website, The Drum Broker, is the largest online drum sample business in the world selling digital drum kit downloads to everyone from music hobbyists to some of the biggest beat-makers in hip-hop. 

Everyone puts things off once in a while. But if you're a chronic procrastinator, this bad habit can regularly stand in the way of you and success in whatever you pursue. And for entrepreneurs who struggle with time management, the discipline to follow through on a plan can mean the difference between success and failure.

For years, businesses and individuals have looked for a simple solution that lets them sell on their website or blog. In many cases, the approach taken was to set up an online store that was totally separate from their main website – ruining the potential for a seamless shopping experience.

If you’re like most Shopify storeowners, you and your customers don't experience that pain as ecommerce is your primary focus, and your online presence is all packaged into one seamless experience. But for bloggers, artists, writers, and more who aren't running full-fledged ecommerce businesses but want to sell a handful of products, it's been a pain point for quite some time.

Now, all of that is changing.

According to Gallup, half of new businesses in the U.S. fail within the first five years. But it’s important to remember that they don’t fail overnight. In fact, if you look closely, there are a few key signs that can help you identify a failing business months before it happens. Some of these signs include a halt in growth, poor cash-flow management, and a glaring lack of innovation or differentiation.

Say goodbye to long lineups at the post office!

Starting today, you can buy and print USPS shipping labels directly through Shopify which will save you both time and money.

When you buy your shipping labels through Shopify you’ll receive preferred shipping rates that we've negotiated on behalf of all Shopify merchants. For example, the cost to ship a 5lb package from New York City to Chicago is $16.20 if you walk into a USPS location today. When you use Shopify to buy and print that label, you would pay just $11.26 on our Basic plan, $10.53 on Pro, and $9.80 on the Unlimited plan (a 40% savings).

Starting today, Amazon Webstore owners can seamlessly migrate their online store to Shopify.

As Amazon’s preferred migration partner, we've worked closely with the Webstore team to make moving to Shopify simple. In a few steps, merchants can transfer their customer and product data - with zero downtime or service interruptions - and begin taking advantage of an extended 30-day free trial.

First impressions can make or break your business.

The layout of your website, the colors you use, the copy on buy buttons – design is everything when it comes to first impressions.

That’s why it’s important to tap into what make brains tick, and why certain design aesthetics persuade visitors to take a desired action on your website.

Few things are sadder than tuning into your analytics, excited to check out your sales numbers... and seeing data on thousands of abandoning customers. How did it come to this?

I mean, there you are, spending countless hours of work designing, optimizing, and A/B testing your online store. You’d think it would be enough to ensure good conversion rates and steadily grow your customer base.

But it isn’t.

Let’s look at 4 glaring mistakes that could be interfering with your checkout process. There are many more of them, actually, but for now let’s focus on the ones that are obvious and easy(ish) to fix.

In 2012, a year after quitting their day jobs to run their business, Walnut Studiolo, Valerie and her husband Geoffrey, had the idea for a new product. A bicycle frame handle made from leather, that could comfortably allow cyclists to carry their bikes.

After some brainstorming, they looked to Kickstarter to help fund and validate their product idea. Within three days, they met their fundraising goal and wound up raising over five times the amount of money they asked for. On June 16 2015, Valerie and Geoffrey launched a new Kickstarter campaign to fund their next project, which is still on-going at the time of this article being written.

I had the chance to speak with Valerie to talk about their very successful Kickstarter campaign, as well as their latest on-going campaign for The UpCycle Cage, a bicycle water bottle cage made from upcycled stainless steel water bottles.

IFTTT (If This, Then That) is a free online tool that automates actions between websites, apps, smartphones, gadgets and more. IFTTT has a lot of novel uses for the average user, but it can be a major marketing ally for small business owners.

Here’s our list of 9 clever and creative ways to use IFTTT to automate tasks for your small business.