Today (Sunday) was by reputation the busiest day of the show. I watched some of the bench challenges; where goldsmiths and designers squared-off in competitions to craft rings or build CAD models. It’s a great show feature. Now, as much as I’ve enjoyed the Smart Show, the keynote address this morning was entirely inappropriate.
The morning speaker was an expert in e-tailing, and spouted the benefits of shopping on-line to a smallish audience primarily comprised of bricks-and-mortar retailers. I’m not sure if the Smart Show believe that she would help encourage the retailers in attendance to build their web-presence into a more effective tool or not.
Nonetheless, one of the tactics that e-tailers should use that all of us could benefit from would be “staff-picks.” Why not have a show-case where each of your staff’s photos are shown besides their top 5 jewellery picks each week, two weeks or month? Wouldn’t that help engage the staff in your inventory and help connect them to your clients in a new way?
Show-traffic proved to be busy, but we noticed that like any show, Sunday was the day for any Goldsmiths, Mom-and-Pop shops and quasi-jewellery-retailer to use their day-off to browse the show. It was difficult to sort between retail prospects and the chaff.
The highlight of today was having a cocktail with friends from Saskatoon up at the 96th floor bar at The John Hancock Centre. The views were spectacular as we watched the sun set over Chicago’s flat and expansive skyline.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.