Multichannel Surfing

DRTV lost Billy Mays yesterday, and I didn’t even know who he was. I knew - and trusted - the face, and I bought the products because I saw them on TV.

But when a bunch of different people came up to me at a party yesterday and asked if I heard about Billy Mays, I thought they were talking about the Say Hey Kid. Or Willie Mays Hayes (American Express - don’t steal home without it!).

Anyway - here’s a link for you to kick off your Monday. It’s one man’s opinion on the Top 10 Billy Mays infomercials of all time. Check them out and tell me what you think.

Nothing really alarming here (except a lot of people may not know that Circuit City was acquired and re-launched as a Web-only venture by Systemax).

The key here is that Circuit City has launched a page on Facebook, and are not censoring the voice of its fans. more

Just a quick post to say Ilana Rabinowitz, vice president of Lion Brand Yarn, hit the nail on the head here at IRCE.

The reason merchants need to stake their social media claim: Because people buy from other people, not from corporations.

It’s worked for Lion Brand, and I’ll write about this later for Multichannel Merchant. Consumers once thought they were a large brand because they sold to big box stores. Now they are a familiar face to the knitting and crocheting community.

I’m here. And this place (Boston Convention & Expo Center) is huge. I’m in a general session with about 1,000 of my closest friends… and I can’t hear a thing!

Except for the echo-o-o-o-o… more

Another sector of retail that’s been looking up is the dollar and closeout stores. And that makes sense, with unemployment out of control and consumers are tightening their belts. I’ve been hearing a lot about the upscaling of Big Lots, which troubles me a bit, and both Dollar General and Dollar Tree recently reported big first-quarter sales increases. more

Kinetic Marketing president Kim Painley is an expert when it comes to helping catalog retailers define their pay-per-click strategies, and she did a bang-up job talking with me about it Monday on MCM Radio (download or listen to the podcast here).

Now, one thing I asked her at the end was about the banner ads that pop up on my Yahoo Mail page. If I go to, say, Williams-Sonoma, for some research like I did today for an article we posted about its rough first quarter, I have to look at that company’s banner ad the rest of the day. Or at least until another merchant drops a cookie on my computer. more