Joanne Musgrave » Shopaholics

Retailers ramping up their game

Joanne — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 05:35:00 +0000

As Dick Smith this week win the award for the best online retailer, Myer are spending $225 million dollars revamping ONE of their stores.

Myer can’t be doing it all that tough if they can afford to renovate ONE store at $225 million and still see a return on their investment. One would guess that Dick didn’t spend anywhere near that on their web site.

It’s not hard to see who the innovators are.

Photos on canvas

Joanne — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 02:21:02 +0000

I just took a little peek at Fabness, a site where you can order photos to be printed up on canvas. I can see a giant gallery of three very lovely border collies in my future!

Dyson’s excellent customer service

Joanne — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 05:59:11 +0000

Not only are Dyson vacuum cleaners, fans and all other goodies just brilliant and top quality, their customer service is excellent too.

Last year I bought a new turbine head for my old style DC05 barrel vac. I have finally decided it’s time to plug it in and I realised it doesn’t fit. I didn’t realise at the time that I needed to also purchase a connector. Admittedly the website didn’t tell me I needed to, but I didn’t ask either.

I rang today to find out how to fix this, all ready to buy the adapter, and they offered to send it to me at no charge. It’s only a small piece, and I have spent a fair bit of money with them, but this small gesture has made me appreciate my dog hair sucking vacuum cleaner even more.

iPad covers miracle

Joanne — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 06:12:35 +0000

I have no idea how this happened, but when you go to Google and type in iPad covers, our little ole shop comes up #7. We only sell 3 Built NY iPad covers, I’ve never done any SEO work for the phrase and we sell bugger all of them, but we still rank ok. Go figure!

If you’re in need of a neoprene cover for your iPad, check them out, they’re pretty funky.

Organic Meat on the Central Coast

Joanne — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 05:37:21 +0000

I will elaborate more, but I just found out about Strictly Organic, who do organic meat & poultry on the Central Coast. I’m going to check them out.

Best Microwave order EVER

Joanne — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 10:55:04 +0000

I was in need of a cheap microwave tonight. After seeing John Winning speak at an e-commerce conference recently, I decided to check his site out first, Appliances Online. I got a $119 Samsung for 33% off – with FREE delivery and I got to choose the delivery date, which is one month from now. It’s being delivered in one of their trucks too.

I’m not quite sure how he makes money off a sale like this (I’m guessing he doesn’t make much), but it’s good for the consumer anyway.

Bespoke shoes

Joanne — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 11:54:37 +0000

I spent Wednesday this week at the Online Retailer Roadshow learning about all the new things happening in online retail. Apart from all the great tips I learnt to improve my shop (not sharing here guys, sorry), I found two great new websites to shop from and learnt the meaning of a new word, bespoke!

Shoes of Prey were one of the guests at the conference. It’s an Australian site for bespoke shoes. Bespoke is the ‘fancy’ word for ‘custom made’. Surprisingly, they start from $195 and go up to $350 for ankle boots. I think that’s pretty damn good for a pair of shoes you get to design yourself. Go check it out, you’ll have oodles of fun playing with the shoe maker, and if you’re at all worried, there’s a 365 day money back guarantee if they don’t fit or if you don’t like them.

The second shop was Appliances Online. Now, normally, 27 year old with a huge success story like this business would make me want to hate him, but John Winning was a guest speaker and he was just so down to earth and worked hard to get his success – starting off by doing customer service himself 24/7. After taking a good look through his site, I can tell you, I’m not walking in to a Harvey Norman again to buy a toaster or a kettle or a fridge or any appliance. Great company, great worth ethic, great success story, great products, great prices. Why would you go anywhere else.

This could be dangerous

Joanne — Fri, 27 May 2011 06:25:21 +0000

David Lawrence have just lauched an online store. Normally I take a trek in to Newcastle to their standalone store and walk out with $400+ in new goodies. Now it’s at my fingertips 24/7. God help my credit card!!!

Cheap food at The Orient – thanks Scoopon!

Joanne — Thu, 26 May 2011 10:22:30 +0000

I’ve been getting the emails from Scoopon every day, and up until now, haven’t really seen anything I was interested in. $149 worth of foot at The Orient at the rocks in Sydney for $49, which is dinner for 2, entree, main, dessert & a drink for less than 25 bucks each.

Bargain!

Lunchbots Stainless Steel Lunch Box

Joanne — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 09:04:14 +0000

We’ve been doing a huge amount of product development for Shop Naturally, and for the past couple of weeks we’ve been working on our stainless steel lunch box range.

We have added the LunchBots, the ECOlunchbox and a whole range of insulated lunch bags from Built NY. Click on the links to check out how funky they are!

Day 4, and we’ve gone walking EVERY morning before work. I’m so glad I’m getting up early each morning and going for a walk before work, I feel so much better for it now.

Today I even took the dogs with me, and trust me, it was a fun experience when they’ve never learnt to heal on a lead! (thanks James). I have now gone and bought short dog leads from Pet Barn today and getting the dogs to heal should be a little easier tomorrow. Stay tuned.