It breaks my heart to go shopping sometimes. There's the "Going out of business sale," the pride-saving "Lost our lease sale," and the cardboard headstone "Space For Rent." They are all a result of the same problem . . . not enough customers.

It's nice when you can open a business and attract new customers the next day. It's great when a website guarantees your profitability. But none of those things happen without good planning. Without a good plan, and the proper execution, businesses die very quickly.

3 RULES TO ATTRACT NEW CUSTOMERS

1. Let people know you exist. Advertise and market yourself—don't forget social media (It doesn’t cost anything), Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook, etc. If people don't know where you are and what you do, they can't buy from you. Marketing greatly increases your chances of success, so set up a marketing calendar and plan ahead. Ask customers for referrals, ...

While all of your customers are working on their New Year’s resolutions, you’re trying to take a breather from the craziness of the holidays and winter show season. However, the start of a brand new year is the perfect time for your retail business to clean house, make some important changes and prepare for the upcoming year.

From point-of-sale updates to your overall business plan, consider our top five tips for preparing for the new year.

Launch an E-commerce Site
One of the best ways to expand your retail business in 2013 is to launch an e-commerce website to sell your goods and products to online customers. InternetRetailer.com reports, “Online shoppers in the United States will spend $327 billion in 2016, up 45% from $226 billion this year and 62% from $202 billion in 2011.” If you’re not selling online, you’re missing out on a large chunk of your customer ...

In a world where jobs are practically impossible to find, many people as well as businesses may want to think about looking into internships. During this year I found myself being an intern at Smart Retailer magazine, and I couldn’t be more thankful for the experience.

Being an intern was one of the most beneficial and most challenging things I have done in my life; it gave me more experience than I could have ever imagined in the field of publishing. In my experience as an intern I was doing something different every day, so when I say that I got experience I mean it. Having worked in so many different areas and doing so many different jobs during my internship helped me to realize everything that went into publishing a magazine, and defeated my ignorance in thinking that I could just walk into a publishing job and only have ...

Happy New Year! The holiday season has come and gone and we are looking forward to a big year. Recently, I’ve been working closely with a fixture manufacturing team as we expand our brands, particularly Bella Taylor handbags. My wife, Julie, and I took a trip a couple of weeks ago to spend a day or so with the team working out a lot of details and we are excited to launch this new phase of our business.

We also had lengthy talks to free-associate a lot of ideas about store sets, merchandising and the selling environment in general. Below are a few thoughts from those discussions, in no special order.

• Behind every great store environment is a person or team committed to excellence in the physical store environment. Lighting, fronting displays, arranging merchandise for strong visual focus are all daily, indeed hourly, endeavors and tasks.

• Plan for ...

First, let me give a nod of support to Country Business as it transforms to Smart Retailer.  I know the magazine team is working hard to make sure the transition is smooth and successful.  From VHC, Inc. our team wishes you the best in 2012.

Over the years, I’ve had the pleasure of working with the Country Business/Smart Retailer team, and talking frequently with editor Susan Wagner about industry happenings and the general state of things. One of our favorite activities is to get together over dinner and exchange a lot of ideas, and see if anything sticks. We have an unspoken rule, which I will now speak (sorry Susan!): there is no dumb or ridiculous idea, and the worst thing you can do is not put it out there. We usually exchange 20-30 ideas a session. Some are big, some are easy, some are ideas that don’t have enough ...