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In a downloadable report, MasterCard Services has made their predictions about 2023 and what it could mean for retail. Sections of the 29-page report detail the Economic Outlook, Understanding Consumers, Reaching Consumers, Keeping Customers, Paying for Purchases and Shopping In-store and Virtual.

MasterCard looks at trends in a new report

Economic Outlook
Inflation is impacting household budgets as 2023 begins, but the report says consumers are still in buying mode, with a backlog of demand for travel and eating out after the pandemic shut downs. Many consumers will opt for cheaper options and spend less on discretionary retail like furniture, electronics and apparel. One result of the pandemic may be a permanent reduction in in-person shopping.

Regarding understanding consumers, the report emphasizes the need to data to inform retailers’ decision-making and flexibility to change with trends. Consumers are increasingly looking for personalized experiences in retail.

Privacy concerns has driven a change in the way some retailers are reaching consumers. Apple’s decision to allow iPhone users to opt out of allowing apps to track their activity is a big factor with 96% of iPhone users choosing to opt out. Another factor is websites giving users the ability to opt out of “cookies.” These and other factors have caused Retail Media Networks to grow, giving large retailers a platform to sell ads to vendors. Social media and commerce on social media is growing as well. The report expects a 31% increase in social commerce from 2022 to 2030.

The report states that periods of economic change cause customer loyalty to be unpredictable, so rewards programs become more important for retaining customers. Paid memberships is another innovation that the report explores.

How customers pay is of course a big concern to MasterCard, and the report has a section devoted to that subject as well. The payment choices available have exploded in recent years, from bank phone apps to apps like Venmo and PayPal to cryptocurrency, payment is now much more than “cash, check or card?” In a survey, 44% of consumers said they have made a contactless payment in the past year, rather than inserting or swiping a card.

Increasingly the lines between shopping in person and shopping online are blurring as consumers just think of both as “shopping,” but each will continue to have their own advantages and unique needs.

Semi-Annual Trade Show Issue Feature Article

With pandemic shutdowns in the rearview mirror, the 2023 winter trade shows are gearing up, hoping for a busy season. After businesses suffering during the shutdowns, the are anxious for an active commercial season.

Everybody knows about the big-city shows: Las Vegas, Dallas, Atlanta, New York, Chicago, etc., but there are a variety of regional and specialty shows that shouldn’t be forgotten. In this semi-annual trade show special issue, we take a look at some examples of small shows.

Buyers at Orlando’s Surf Expo

Thinking Big on a Small Scale
Orlando, Florida is not just a vacation destination and the home of a certain mouse. It is also the location of a number of specialty shows. One of them, “Surf Expo,” kicks off the winter show season, starting on January 4 at the Orange County Convention Center. Billing itself as “the world’s premier watersports and beach lifestyle tradeshow,” the Surf Expo caters to shops near the water, drawing aobut 7,400 buyers. The promoters, Emerald, also have a Surf Expo in September as well as a number of shows in other categories, including NY Now and ASD Market Week in Las Vegas.

Another Orlando show is the Florida Jewelry and Resort Expo, which runs Feb. 24-26 at the Osceola Heritage Park Events Center in Kissimmee. Promoter Golden Triangle also has jewelry show in Greensboro, NC in December.

Continuing our focus on Orlando, March 22-24 will see the Global Pet Expo at the Orange County Convention Center. The show is put on by the American Pet Products Association (APPA) and the Pet Industry Distributors Association (PIDA). The associations are expecting 1,000 exhibitors, 300 first-time exhibitors, with 3,000 new product launches.

Later in May, 2023, Orlando’s Embassy Suites Orlando International Drive will be the site of the International Fashion Jewelry & Accessory Show.

Alaska Gift Show buyers shop Silverbear Sundries

Now, changing our focus to about as far from Orlando and sunny Florida as possible inside the US, both in terms of location and climate, the Alaska Wholesale Gift Show begins January 18 at the Dena Ina Civic Center in Anchorage. Excited to be live after a series of virtual shows during the pandemic, the show is promoted as “Alaska’s only wholesale gift show featuring artists, manufacturers and reps from around Alaska, the Country and the World.” The show is continuing the virtual connection, however, giving distant buyers the ability to “Zoom” with select exhibitors.

A number of regional shows are promoted by Silver Lining Shows featuring apparel, accessories, jewelry, footware, gift and lifestyle and home decor.

Northern Michigan Regional Trade Show, held in Gaylord, is one of several Silver Linings Shows

• First on the calendar is the Kentucky Bluegrass Buyer’s Market in Lexington, January 29 and 30.
• Simultaneously and extending through January 31 is the Rev Chicago Boutique Show in Des Plaines, IL. The 2023 show is being branded as “The Mix” because it’s being held together with the Midwest Gift & Lifestyle Show.
• In February (5 and 6), the Michigan Womens Wear Market will be held at the Embassy Suites Detroit-Livonia. There are four more of these shows during the year with the June and November shows including Sample Sales.
• The Northern Michigan Regional Trade Show is Feb. 8 and 9 at The Ellison Place, Gaylord Michigan.
• The last Silver Lining show of winter is The Indy Show features apparel, accessories, jewelry, footware, home and gifts and comes at the end of Feb. (28th-Mar. 1) in Noblesville, IN.

Most of these Silver Linings Shows have additional shows throughout the year, so check the website for more information.

Once again, OmegaNet, the publisher of this newsletter is featuring select vendors in a Virtual Trade Show at GiftShowSpecials.com. There you can see videos from several vendors letting you see their featured products even if you don’t see them at the shows.

Don’t forget, you can always find trade show information at giftswholesale.com/trade-shows. OmegaNet/CAMEO EZ/GiftsWholesale.com is not directly associated with any trade show. We work hard make the trade show list as accurate as possible, but sometimes things change, so be sure to double check the show promoters’ websites. If you find an error, or you want to ask us to add a show to our list, email us at newsletters@omeganetinc.net.

“Stores will never buy products on the Internet.”

These were some of the words of skeptics that greeted Toni Ivey when she began trying to sell the Gift & Home industry on Business-to-Business (B2B) ecommerce websites in the late 1990s. Yet, 25 years later, retail stores have demonstrated that they will order inventory on the Internet.

OmegaNet Inc. has had two logo designs in its 25-year history. The current design was created in 2010.

OmegaNet Incorporated, publisher of this newsletter and developer of the CAMEO EZ^© wholesale ordering platform, turns 25 years old in November of 2022. Founded by Toni Ivey in the Atlanta, Georgia area, the company has built hundreds of wholesale, B2B websites for Gift, Home, Garden, Accessories, Apparel, Decor and Toy companies. Millions of dollars in wholesale orders have been placed by tens of thousands of retailers during that time. Several OmegaNet wholesale-vendor clients have been with OmegaNet for 15, 20, and even the entire 25 years! New vendors are being added all the time, but two of the very earliest vendor clients are still clients of OmegaNet: Bards.com and CrownSpices.com.

It’s hard to believe now, but when Ivey bought OmegaNet’s first domain name (GiftsWholesale.Com) in November, 1997, Amazon.com was only three and EBay.com was just two years old. Google and PayPal would not be founded for another year. In fact, OmegaNet is seven years older than Facebook and almost ten years older than Twitter.

On the occasion of the company’s 10-year anniversary in 2007, OmegaNet Inc. president Toni Ivey (right) and vice president Gary Ivey served birthday cake to more than 100 GHTA conference attendees.

Later other portals were added, such as AccessoriesWholesale.Com, ApparelWholesale.biz, DecorWholesale.Com, ToysWholesale.Com, and most recently, USMadeWholesale.Com.

That first website, GiftsWholesale.Com, was an advertising portal, where retailers can find real wholesale products. However, vendors who wanted to advertise on GiftsWholesale.com, often didn’t have their own websites, so OmegaNet began building websites; some were just information sites, but many wanted a Business-to-Business (B2B) ordering website and that is when CAMEO© was born. “CAMEO” is an acronym for “Complete Automated Merchant Electronic Ordering”.

OmegaNetInc.net Home Page.

CAMEO was custom coded from the ground up for OmegaNet to allow for secure registration and log in, first order and reorder minimums, item minimums, volume discounts, case quantities, and more; features the consumer-oriented e-commerce systems of the time didn’t have. A simple Content Management System (CMS) was included so OmegaNet clients could have as much control over their website content as possible, without waiting for a webmaster to get around to doing updates.

Since 2003, OmegaNet’s wholesale websites have been built on the “CAMEO EZ^©” platform, a proprietary software system built from the ground-up for the Gift & Home industry and the special needs of wholesale ordering. Numerous upgrades and improvements have been made in the intervening years as OmegaNet’s client base grew.

Pictured are the early logos for CAMEO© and CAMEO EZ©.

“Some web companies’ business models are built around making it difficult for their clients to do anything without coming back to them for billable work,” Ivey says, “but from the beginning, we believed our clients should be able to manage as much as possbile without calling us. After all it is their website.” For that reason the system always allowed clients to update their own product data, images, and information pages.

CAMEO became CAMEO EZ© in 2003, built on a better database and software language platform. Numerous upgrades and improvements have been made in the intervening years and OmegaNet’s client base grew.

An important feature was added to the “EZ” version of CAMEO: retail stores could “copy” their registrations from one CAMEO EZ© site to another without filling out the registration form again. As a result, the thousands of retail stores that registered in the CAMEO EZ© system, along with the vendors from which they ordered their inventory, began to be called “The CAMEO EZ© Community”. CAMEOEZ.com is now a place where all CAMEO EZ© websites can be seen in the “Directory” using a CAMEO EZ© username and password.

The “Community” was so popular among retailers, that, in 2015, a book titled “Real Wholesale Sources” was published by Ryan Reger (available in the Amazon Kindle store) that was little more than a guide to the CAMEO EZ Community, giving specific instructions on how to register as a CAMEO EZ customer, how to find inventory and how to place an order on a CAMEO EZ website. A chapter titled “The Sources” listed CAMEO EZ vendors almost exclusively as the best sources for wholesale inventory. OmegaNet is also mentioned as one “of the biggest players” in the B2B space in the 2020 book “The COMPLETE BOOK of Product Design, Development, Manufacturing, and Sales” by Steven Selikoff, also available on Amazon.com.

All CAMEO EZ© websites can be seen in the “Directory” on CAMEOEZ.com using a CAMEO EZ© username and password.

OmegaNet’s tagline is “Building Brands, Boosting Sales.” In 2007, OmegaNet extended it’s advertising from “passive” (on the portals), to “active” through email advertising. Today, many thousands of retailers count on receiving email notifications of specials, new products and other offers from CAMEO EZ vendors. Approximately 80,000 retail stores have opted to recieve email messages from OmegaNet. As a result, many vendors who do not have an OmegaNet website take advantage of OmegaNet’s email marketing services.

In 2006, the Gift & Home Retailer email newsletter was begun, the first issue appearing in July, for the purpose of communicating to those who had registered in one of the portals to learn of news about vendors and trade shows, as well of general news of interest to the industry. Annual special issues include the “Green” Issue (April), Trade Show Issue (June and December) and the Made-in-USA issue (October).

Running your business is complicated; you have a lot on your plate. But good customer service is the lifeblood of any business. Bringing in new customers through promotions and sales are important, but unless at least some of those customers come back and buy again, your business won’t be profitable for long.

So it’s key to send your customers away happy – happy enough to give positive feedback to their friends.

You can sell anything to anyone once. But your approach to customer service will determine if you’ll ever sell that person anything else. In her newsletter, business speaker Barbara Wold says, “The essence of good customer service is forming a relationship with customers – a relationship that an individual customer feels he would like to pursue.”

Below are Wold’s Eight Simple Rules to Good Customer Service:

1. Answer your phone. Make sure that someone with a pleasant voice is picking up the phone.
2. Don’t make promises unless you “WILL” keep them. Reliability is one of the keys to any good relationship, and good customer service is no exception.
3. Listen to your customers. Let your customer talk and show him that you are listening by making the appropriate responses, such as suggesting certain merchandise or how to solve the problem.
4. Deal with complaints. Give the complaint your attention, you may be able to please this one person this one time — and position your business to reap the benefits of good customer service.
5. Be helpful – even if there’s no immediate profit in it. The other day Jane popped into a local watch shop because she had lost the small piece that clips the pieces of her watchband together. When she explained the problem, the proprietor said that he thought he might have one lying around. He found it, attached it to her watchband — and charged her nothing! Where do you think Jane will go when she needs a new watchband or even a new watch? And how many people do you think she has told this story to?
6. Train your staff to be ALWAYS helpful, courteous, and knowledgeable. Give every member of your staff enough information and power to make those small customer-pleasing decisions, so he never has to say, “I don’t know.”
7. Take the extra step. Lead the customer to the item they asked about. Better yet, wait and see if he has questions about it, or further needs. Whatever the extra step may be, if you want to provide good customer service, take it.
8. Throw in something extra. Whether it’s a coupon for a future discount, additional information on how to use the product, or a genuine smile — people love to get more than they expect.

Applying these eight simple rules consistently, you will make your business known for good service. Over time, good customer service will bring in more new customers than promotions and price slashing ever did!