"Many e-commerce solutions have missed out on Web 2.0 and the revolution of social media. Most price comparison web sites and quite a few on-line shops look 10 years old. These kind of sites are not fun to use and don't inspire people to make purchases! Our vision is to offer a huge product catalog spanning many different categories of products and at the same time to provide the same high quality shopping experience that they are accustomed to when visiting their favorite shops," says James Blewitt, one of the founders of Shelf9.
Shelf9 combines an appealing design with a highly capable price comparison search machine and a product catalog that covers over 50 million products. Social Shopping is deeply integrated into the platform, but not so much as become a nuisance.
By logging into Shelf9, via Facebook or Twitter, the user can individualize the shopping experience. Users can choose if they want to receive special offers from only their favorite shops and brands and can choose to receive email alerts when such offers become available. Through the "Shelf It" function, the user can collect multiple products into "sets", for example, the items comprising a complete outfit, top 10 favorite movies or fragrances, or simply things that the user perhaps wishes to purchase at some future time.
These sets, called "Shelves", can be shared and discussed with friends. This makes collaborating on choosing a gift for a friend easy, as well as getting help combining clothing articles from your own social group. You can even send your own advice to a friend who is perhaps struggling to choose a new LED television.
While signing up to Shelf9 has many benefits it is not a requirement. People simply wanting to find cool products at good prices can simply search through the huge, and ever expanding, product catalog and buy those products directly at Shelf9's partner shops.
The name Shelf9 comes from the expression "Cloud 9". Through the user tailored shopping experience and the "Shelf It" function, users can find their favorite products and build: The Perfect Shelf.
Changing shopping habits - Manila Times
Jeannie Javelosa, my business partner, and I were having a sayote tops and fish for lunch when she mentioned that she went shopping last Sunday and noticed her habits had changed. She went past the canned goods section, read all the labels of products before shooting them into her cart and checked the food labels of fruits, if they had any that is (see related Facebook post in ECHOstore page on fruit labels).
I have not gone to a grocery in many months as I do my shopping mostly in ECHOmarket (shameless plug) and if I need anything extraordinary, I usually just send for it through my staff. I avoid going to supermarkets unless it is for a market check. I get overwhelmed with the choices of flavors, the array of options, all because people now have very many different tastes.
We call it the “long tail” in marketing. Because of technology, non-traditional advertising, many touchpoints to reach the consumer, choices are aplenty and people have individual tastes expressed in every SKU (stock keeping unit) or every item in a supermarket. So in a graph, this phenomenon creates a “long tail” of choices per consumer.
In “big box” retailers like warehouse clubs, they narrow down the choice to a few per category, but the boxes are huge or you have to buy in bulk (6 packs, 12 packs, etc). That’s because the big box retailer wants you not to have too many options. They are the “short tail but big ticket.”
Then, there is online shopping. I have a friend in Milpitas, California who does all his shopping online, and this habit to include shopping for shoes and jeans. Wow! I have yet to dare myself to buy stuff I cannot fit first. But when one is regular-sized, I think that poses no problem at all. So online is yet another option to go shopping. Would you buy organic vegetables online? Maybe that day is forthcoming.
As delivery channels change by the day or as options increase for customers to get goods to their homes, there is nothing like the old-fashioned way of going to a “suki” (frequent customer or regular vendor). Your suki knows what cuts of fish you like or what bread you prefer. And this is what we miss about shopping nowadays. We have to find our favorite vendors in weekend markets, in specialty stores and maybe even by “phone order and delivery.”
Have your shopping habits changed as well? While I talk about delivery channels and shopping options, my friend Jeannie talks about making healthier choices when she goes shopping. She no longer buys processed foods in cans and has chosen many fresher alternatives.
A niece of mine brings her children to the supermarket so they can learn how to shop intelligently.
She explains to them how to read labels (did you know that the first ingredient listed is the ingredient with the highest percentage and it is listed in descending order?) and how to compare prices of similar categories of food or supplies. Her daughter now can go shopping for the whole family, even if she is just in her teens. Kids have to be taught and not just fed and entertained while shopping.
The best option, however, is to try and grow your own vegetables, herbs and some fruits. If you do not have a backyard, grow them in bottles or pots. Make your own fresh juice, rather than buying prepared juices with preservatives or a lot of sugar.
Buy fruits and make your own ice cream or sherbets.
No time? Look for specialty stores who can prepare fresh food for you. I know we recently got an order for a dozen packs of mushroom burgers with NO salt. And we did it. There was a time when a gentleman brought his book to our store, bookmarked a page and asked us if we could prepare his “fit for life” fruit smoothie.
Well, sometimes we can do special orders like his.
Meanwhile, be a conscious shopper. Everyone shops for something. Even a farmer or a weekend farmer like myself needs other things and we do have to shop elsewhere. But check labels, check ingredients, and discover a regular suki. My mother raised us on food she got from her favorite purveyors, and she never went wrong. She had a specialist for each kind of meat, a specialist for chickens and of course, fish.
Happy shopping!
Chit Juan is a founder and owner of ECHOStore sustainable lifestyle, ECHOmarket sustainable farms in Serendra and Podium malls. She also heads the Women’s Business Council of the Philippines and the Philippine Coffee Board Inc., two non-profits close to her heart. She often speaks to corporates, youth and NGOs on social entrepreneurship, women empowerment, and coffee. You can follow her on twitter.com/chitjuan or find her on facebook:Pacita “Chit” Juan. Email her at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .
Doha mall shut until safety concerns addressed - Zawya.com
Saturday, Jun 16, 2012
Manama Qatar authorities have shut down the country’s largest shopping and recreation centre, the City Centre, until all safety concerns are properly addressed.
The centre that receives 40,000 visitors a day and up to 70,000 a day over the weekend has apparently failed to comply with safety requirements, an investigation team has found out, a local daily reported.
“The Civil Defence team made a surprise visit to the mall at around 5am on Thursday,” Al Arab said. “The team discovered that the mall had introduced unlicensed changes and failures in safety standards that could put people’s lives at risk,” it said.
The interior ministry pledged a zero-tolerance policy towards any public building that failed to comply with safety and security standards and said that it would not hesitate to shut down any facility that put people’s lives at risk.
The ministry did not specify how long the five-storeyed City Centre in Doha’s posh West Bay would remain closed, the management has reportedly put up a notice on its entrance gates informing that the mall would be closed for 48 hours.
According to local reports, demands by the civil defence included installing new fire safety equipment to help with emergency evacuations, making emergency exits automatically linked to the safety alarm system and setting up a central control room to monitor the mall.
The civil defence is set to conduct more visits to public places, including malls, hotels, cinemas, schools and large residential facilities, to assess their levels of readiness to deal with emergency incidents.
The Civil Defence announced that it will make surprise visits to public institutions and inspect their safety and security measures and if they do not comply with the standards, they will be shut down or will be given up to 30 days to fix the faults or .
If the institutions do not raise the standards after the time limit, a fine up to 200,000 riyals will be imposed, or the building will be shut down.
The aggressive seriousness about safety hazards by the authorities was prompted by the worst tragedy to hit Qatar in modern times.
A blaze that broke out at the Villaggio Mall in Doha on May 28 killed 19 people, including 13 children, inside a daycare centre that was not properly licenced by the education authorities.
An ad-hoc commission set up by Crown Prince Shaikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al Thani hours after the tragedy found after one week of investigations that the highly popular mall did not have the safety standards required by the authorities.
It also discovered that the daycare centre in which the 13 children, four staff and two firefighters died, had a licence from the trade ministry.
Other issues of concern were related to the mall staff readiness to deal with emergency situations and the lack of communication with the rescue teams.
The firefighters learned about the existence of children and staff trapped inside the first floor daycare centre about 30 minutes after they arrived to the mall to deal with the fire that was started by a faulty wiring.
The closure of two malls in Doha has seemingly caused consternation among a Qatar population that has made visiting malls, mainly during weekends, as one of their top activities.
By Habib Toumi Bureau Chief and Mostafa Sheshtawy, ?Correspondent
© Gulf News 2012. All rights reserved.
Extra jobs will be created at new look Sainsbury’s store - Northampton Chronicle
About 80 full time and part time jobs will be created through the expansion of Sainsbury’s supermarket near Sixfields in Northampton.
Work started on alterations to the Weedon Road store a month ago, and this week work began to demolish the landmark tower which used to stand at the entrance to the shop.
It is expected the redevelopment of the supermarket will be completed by the end of the year and the main changes will see a new second storey built on top of the current building and a decked car park constructed in front of the store.
Duty manager, Ben Newton, said both staff and customers were excited about the work.
He said: “Shoppers have been really positive about the alterations and we’ve had a lot of questions about what’s going on.
“There’s a real sense of anticipation from people and the staff are really looking forward to the changes.”
While the work is being carried out, the supermarket’s cafe has been moved to a temporary building in the store’s car park as have the toilets and a branch of the shoe repair firm, Timpson.
The project manager for the extension works, Alex Shearer, said work on the development was progressing well.
He said: “We’re looking forward to improving the store for our customers, as well as creating new jobs for local people.
“The works are being safely phased so customers can rest assured that the store will remain open and accessible throughout.”
To get into the shop, customers now have to walk through a covered walkway. Once inside the store, there are few visible signs of the work being carried out outside.
Plans for the expansion of the store were backed by Northampton Borough Council’s planning committee in January last year, with councillors saying it would be a real boost for the town.
Improvements will include the creation of a large shopping area and the introduction of a new clothes department.
New hot food and fresh food counters will also be created inside the new look store.
The main alteration will be the creation of a new second floor above the current supermarket.
The second floor will contain a new cafe.
A new decked car park will also be built in the store’s current car park.
Shoppers will be able to get to the second floor either from the new car park or by using stairs, a lift or a travelator from the ground floor.
To improve access into the store, a new roundabout will be built in Gambrel Road.
Sainsbury’s has said it expects to start recruiting extra people to work in the new look store in the next few months.
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Print this pageBT gambles that Premier League deal will pay off faster than broadband - The Guardian
And now over to the football results read by James Alexander Gordon: Premier League footballers 1: BT and BSkyB shareholders 0. The £3bn carve-up of the Premier League broadcast rights was a shock result that had footie fans cheering, but investors weeping into their cups of Bovril.
The arrival of a formidable challenger to Sky in the shape of BT is to be welcomed, because competition will keep TV and broadband prices keen. But the telecoms provider's expensive foray into sports broadcasting will stick in the craw of the millions of households still waiting for a decent broadband connection.
BT is writing a £738m cheque for 114 games – nearly £6.5m a match – which works out at roughly a third of the £2.5bn it is spending to upgrade its creaking copper network to fibre for an increasingly internet-addicted customer base.
That investment will mostly cover urban areas, the two thirds of UK homes that are easiest to reach and already have access to the most reliable broadband, as well an attractive alternative in the shape of Virgin Media's very fast cable network.
But what of the households being left out in the cold? The government has earmarked public money to ensure that, within five years, 90% of the UK will have superfast broadband, with the final 10% guaranteed a basic 2Mb connection – enough for one computer to watch the BBC iPlayer.
That pot of public money is just £530m, comfortably less than BT's football flutter, and the company has offered to match that when it wins contracts from local councils to carry out the work. Further sums may come from Europe. But there are already signs that this won't deliver the 2017 targets.
On Friday morning, as the City was digesting the dramatic shift in Britain's pay-TV landscape by lopping points off BT's and Sky's share prices, Cumbria county council took a brave decision.
Living in one of Britain's beauty spots has its disadvantages, and many Cumbrians are on the wrong side of the digital divide when it comes to broadband. The council has £40m, including £17m from the government pot, to get 90% of homes and businesses connected with speeds of 25Mb or more by 2015.
BT and rival Japanese group Fujitsu have both submitted bids for the work. After months of deliberation, instead of declaring a winner, the council has very publicly sent them back to the drawing board. BT says it cannot afford to spend more on fibre, because even in urban areas the new cables will take 12 years to turn a profit. Perhaps. But the football rights only last for three years, and experts at research firm Enders Analysis think it unlikely BT will make a return by 2016. Unless it can take more matches from Sky in the next auction, or dramatically increase the 700,000 subscribers to its BT Vision TV service, the sports channel will probably continue to make a loss.
It's a pattern that bankrupted previous Sky challengers like Setanta, but with £6bn a year in earnings, BT can afford to take the hit. And it argues that good TV content will help sell fibre. Bundle in 80Mb broadband with top-flight films and sport and you can reel them in.
Ultimately, what BT has chosen to do is invest its money where the competition is. It is laying fibre in Virgin Media areas, and investing in TV in order to keep its own broadband customers from jumping ship to Sky. In Cumbria, nobody is lining up to build a deluxe fibre network.
The government has no plans to divert significant new sums into broadband before the next general election, despite the economic benefits that good internet access can bring. The argument from the ministers in charge, Jeremy Hunt and Ed Vaizey, is that the private sector will fill the gap. But the Premier League's pay rise suggests that more money will flow into football than fibre.
Electrical fault
Welcome to the top job at Dixons, Seb James: your first task is to decide whether there's any point in selling electrical goods in Greece and Italy. Even French giant Carrefour said on Friday that it was getting out of Greece. Would it be brave or foolhardy for Dixons to stay?
Unfortunately for James, this question requires an urgent answer. For the past two years, it could be ignored because the group's biggest problems lay at home: the internet changed life forever for electrical retailers and Dixons was caught half asleep. James's predecessor, John Browett, performed a heroic back-to-basics rescue act, investing in customer service and seeing off US challenger Best Buy. These days, the UK operation is producing profits of about £80m: that's not like the good old pre-internet-shopping days, but it's a better performance than the sceptics feared.
But the "southern Europe" problem was largely ignored when the focus was on the UK and while the group's Scandinavian operation continued to shine, generating top-line profits of around £100m. It was a case of crossing fingers, running a tight ship and hoping gentler economic winds would arrive.
That stance doesn't look credible for much longer because the problem is becoming too big to ignore. Southern Europe (not just Greece and Italy, but also better-performing Turkey) will turn in a loss of about £30m when Dixons reports on Thursday, almost twice last year's outcome. And the Pixmania online business on the continent could lose as much as £20m. A combined £50m operating loss is a serious headache in the context of a company whose pre-tax profits, after heavy interest costs, are £65m-£70m.
What's the answer? One suspects James will attempt to buy time, promising to trim costs further in southern Europe and to minimise the cash drain; after all, a bite-the-bullet exit would generate significant closure costs. But he'd be taking a gamble. If radical surgery is inevitable, it may be better to get on with it. As matters stand, the questions over Greece and Italy are killing the share price, which has fallen from 18p to 13p since the end of April.
Hidden depths
Normally, only scoundrels plump for the Maxwellian option of banning the media from an annual general meeting. But as the "shareholder spring" closes, there are still FTSE 100 bosses attempting to emulate the great Mirror Group pension thief.
Journalists were barred from the AGM of security group G4S this month, a move so in keeping with the mood for transparency that mining company ENRC followed suit.
The two firms have little in common, except for wrestling with inconvenient problems that need hushing up. For G4S that includes the story of an asylum seeker dying in its care; meanwhile, ENRC can't shake corruption suspicions and worries over the influence of controlling shareholders. Mehmet Dalman, the new ENRC chairman, insists he runs the company in the way he sees fit, but also says the press blackout was imposed on him by his board.
There lies the irony. Restricting access to AGMs may prevent some information emerging. It also reveals plenty more.
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