The holidays are nearly here! No matter how much you love this time of the year, it is hard to deny that there is additional stress in the workplace. Customers need gift items personalized at the last minute. Requests to engrave gifts purchased elsewhere become common. Questions like “Do you gift wrap?” surface more often. And with all of the sales offered by big box and online stores, the customers think nothing of asking you for a discount or better price. Frustrating, isn’t it? But as customer service professionals, we continue to smile and treat each customer with respect.

The National Design Awards program seeks to increase national awareness of the impact of design through education initiatives. It is presented by Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, which is the Smithsonian Institution’s museum of design.

During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, I developed what I considered to be a brilliant plan to make the shopping experience with our company more enjoyable for our customers. It was a plan to increase sales and grow our customer base. I called it “Plan A” as a joke, never imagining I might need a Plan B or a Plan C.

The average U.S. data breach cost $8.64 million in 2020—and small businesses can be targets, too

Think your business isn’t on hackers’ radar? Think again. Cybercrime has a wide reach, and anyone with data is a potential target. Check out some of the common cyberattacks used to gain access to data and dollars.

It’s almost impossible to run any business nowadays without using computers, the internet, online ordering, and social media. And although technology has increased customer bases, markets, and product availability with new levels of speed and interaction, technology has also brought its own problems—or rather new levels of speed and interaction for the ancient problem of honest merchants guarding against thieves and scammers.

The White family has been personalizing awards and gifts at their shop, Atta-Boy Awards in North Pole, AK, for 45 years. Offering quality service at a fair price, Atta-Boy Awards has gotten an extra boost from the owners’ dedication, creative ideas, and positive outlook.

Everyone is familiar with the old saying, “time is money.” The quotation is attributed to a 1748 letter titled “Advice to a Young Tradesman,” written by Benjamin Franklin. His original quote was “remember that time is money” and was meant as business advice. That particular piece of advice seems as relevant in 2021 as it must have in the 1700s.

This past year, the popular photo sharing social media platform Instagram reached a mighty milestone: There are now more than 1 BILLION people globally using Instagram every day. According to Sprout Social, 63% of U.S. users say they check their Instagram daily, and Instagram users are among the most dedicated (amongst social media platforms) in terms of how frequently they log in.

Some people are introduced to the personalization industry through family or friends.

For retailers to be successful, a web presence is as necessary during (and after) the pandemic as it was, well, even before the pandemic.