The world around us

Well, I’m at the age that all my friends and classmates are having kids and I constantly need to find interesting and different baby shower gifts to give them as well as help them finding places to get the right supplies for their events. That’s where Party Pail comes in; as they have a fun collection of stuff to create an event that is sure to be a hit. How can it not be a success, with such cute designs down to even for the paper napkins! Besides the regular baby shower stuff, they also have lots of special baby shower tableware that turns an ordinary party to something different and memorable. Party Pail has lots of great themes, but the one I liked the best was the Radio Flyer Red Wagon theme, which is just adorable.

Online shopping can be a lot of fun, but it’s also quite confusing. I spent a good amount of time researching for a new desktop and for a while I was quite confused, since I knew there were better options, but I was not able to find them. The problem is that when you use a regular shopping sites, you get to see results of the sites and stores that have paid, yes paid the shopping sites to be featured. So the results are not necessarily good. Instead, if you use something specific like ShopWiki, you are sure to find better and more authentic results.

Other than available options, one is also able to get some very good and useful information about the products, which is really useful when you’re buying electronic items. Not only did I find the information helpful, but I was able to decided which type of system I needed, eventually finalizing on a HP desktop. In addition, since I also needed up update my laptop, I found lots of comparisons on different brands and models as well. Shopping this way is definitely a saner way to tackle, instead of going from one site to another and getting confused about models,brands, prices and shops. I think I’ll be doing more shopping this way!

With the shopping festival going on, there are a large number of discounts and offers available these days. We’re quite tempted to upgrade the TV, since there is a great offer on with lots of free add ons and even a plasma stand, which is pretty handy, right? I thought so too! We still in the process of doing our research and finding the best place to buy, but it really does look like a great deal. Movie and TV watching will definitely be a fun activity around the home with this upgrade!

Well, its time to plan your holiday shopping and like most people, one has to be careful of what one buys and where is the best place to buy it from. So a good amount of research is essential if you want to find the best promotional items that you can get for this holiday season. The Internet is a good place to compare prices, but look out for all those promotional brochures and leaflets that one gets in the newspapers as well. I often don’t bother to look at these, but they can really help in saving valuable time and effort. A little effort now will pay off in the long run….so don’t ignore them.

Dubai has become known for its large scale of doing everything. If a mall has to be built, it has to be the largest in the world. Things seem incongruous at first, things like a ski slope in the mall in a desert, but after a while one comes to expect such audacity from local architecture. The new Dubai Mall, which opened last week has an Olympic size skating rink, the largest single plate aquarium in the world and a three zone Discovery Center, complete with penguins, sharks and so on. I’m yet to go see the mall…hopefully this weekend….and I hope it lives up to its hype. With over 1200 stores in the amll, not all are even open as yet, so that will be a little time in coming.

Walmart has announced that it will be offering free classified ad services on its site Walmart.com. The company launched its site at the end of May and is currently in beta stage. Consumers can search for cars, pets, jobs and real estate on the website. According to Ravi Jariwala, spokesman for Walmart, “Our new classifieds beta at Walmart.com provides an expanded offering of products and services, the majority of which are not traditionally available from Wal-Mart.” Walmart has been doing things differently lately, in an effort to stay competitive on things other than just price, for which it has been the leader for quite some time.

Ikea’s first store in New York City located in Brooklyn opened amid thousands of fans mobbing the store on opening day. Underneath the excitement, is however, the frugality of shoppers in these times of economic slowdown. Even loyal customers are thinking twice about buying items at the store, despite is low prices. A lot of people are specifically visiting the store looking for smaller items, especially sale items.

According to Anders Dahlvig, the CEO and president of Ikea, the slowdown in the housing market has affected its global sales and led to a much reduced levels of impulse buying. He added that the company does not expect any economic recovery in the next two years at least. The countries that have been affected the most are Germany, the US and Britain. The company is trying to focus on newer markets such as Russia, China and countries in Eastern Europe where the markets are growing.

While IKEA faces increasing competition from discounters like Wal-Mart Stores Inc., which has freshened up its home furnishings sections, retailers can’t match IKEA’s breadth of offerings. A typical IKEA store features about 10,000 items. The Brooklyn store offers 49 room vignettes and three model homes, tailored to apartment living.

In the U.S., IKEA’s second-biggest market behind Germany, sales increased a respectable 10 percent in its last fiscal year, but below the 21 percent pace of the previous year, according to Pernille Spiers-Lopez, president of its North America division. The U.S. market accounts for about 10 percent of total sales, which reached 21 billion euros, or about $32 billion, in its last fiscal year.

Retailers, especially luxury retailers are having to change how they do business. It’s no longer unusual to see massive reductions on high end fashion labels like Christian Dior and Christian Lacroix, and Neiman Marcus which has always been rather restrictive with its sales, has cut the prices for brands such as Marc Jacobs, Prada, Manolo Blahnik and Jean Paul Gaultier to half price. Nordstrom started its much awaited semi annual sale earlier this year.

Retailers are also tying up in interesting combinations, with Vera Wang signing a deal with Kohl’s, Ralph Lauren designing a line for J.C. Penney and Normal Kamali teaming up with Wal-Mart. According to Sara Albrecht, the owner of Ultimo a designer boutique on Chicago’s Oak Street, “Before, you would never think of luxury markets being promotional or on sale.” The luxury market has been growing at 10% for the past several years but has now slowed down quite dramatically.

“Price has never been as important to the consumer’s shopping level as it is today no matter what the income level,” said Matt Katz, a New York-based managing director of AlixPartners, a consulting and financial advisory firm. “We’ve studied 5,000 consumers annually for the last 15 years, and for the first time in the history of our study, price is the most important driver for a purchase decision.”

JCPenney is going all out to win over web and other customers. The retailer launched a feature on its website called “Know Before You Go”, where you could get directions to the store, check availability of an items and so on. According to research, it was shown that more than 90% of JCP.com shoppers also shopped at Penney stores and the majority of them researched their purchase online before heading to the stores.

According to Mike Boylson, executive vice president and chief marketing officer of Avenue A | Razorfish, “It’s a lot more than an e-commerce site and a place to transact, it will literally become the new face of the brand.” The company has been integrating its 1100 stores, its website JCP.com and its catalog, and is using all kinds of new marketing initiatives to reach its customers, including mobile marketing. The company combined its annual budget for online marketing which was $300 million to its annual budget for online marketing which was $1.1 billion, so that funds can be allocated correctly.

…JCP.com is the fastest-growing channel for the company and attracts the youngest and most affluent consumers. While Penney advertises extensively through newspapers and direct mail, he said consumers between the age of 18 and 35 “simply aren’t consuming that media. When you look at the cost of paper, print and postage versus the digital space, it becomes an economic necessity to transform advertising into digital media.”

Digital marketing includes reaching customers via their mobile phones, another area where Penney is investing more heavily, Boylson said. He pointed out that while only 13% of U.S. consumers now carry mobile phones with Internet access, by 2011 that is expected to increase to 90% of consumers. “It’s becoming a mobile world,” Boylson said. “This is the wave of the future.”

Online retailers in the home department must work harder than other retailers to get sales, since this is an area that consumers want to be able to touch and feel the item before purchasing. Compare the numbers to books, for which more than half of total sales take place online, while online home improvement retailers see only 5.7% of total sales. According to Christian Friedland, the president of Improvement Direct Inc, there are two main reasons, that consumers want to be able to feel, touch and see the products and that they are worried about getting heavier items delivered, items that require signatures.

To address the desire to touch and feel items, Improvement Direct has created an in-house photo studio that takes images of products from several angles, and then creates Flash-based images that allow site visitors to spin an item to get a complete view of it. Where the e-retailer has created these 360-degree views of products, conversion rates increased by 20%, Friedland said.