Bridging the Gap

I have a new thing coming on the horizon. I'm going to step back and talk a but about what I do (I love to talk) and then move on to my idea.

Years ago I had a very good friend who was in the off price business. She's a brilliant entrepreneur. And we collaborated on a lot of ideas within the off price clothing industry. We got around to getting to know other retailers like us, people who sold on eBay, had websites, were middlemen, had stores and such. One of the things that first came up was these huge inefficiencies in the market.

As a whole, the wholesale business arena (whether it's off price or regular price) has not embraced the internet and probably will not for a very long time. There are tons of well respected experts telling small businesses and entrepreneurs that the internet is a wash. They look at macrobusinesses like Bloomingdales.com, Pets.com and all the other failed dot-coms (remember Boo.com?) and they think that it just doesn't work. But they don't know anything about the new era of microbusinesses and the innovators in the large companies that are making it work.

So nobody wants to "waste their time" with the internet. But the internet is incubating the next generation of entrepreneurs. The people who will have stores in the next few years, who will have large businesses, they are here right now, but no one can make the connection.

And I don't think many will. There are some jobbers that have embraced the net and have been able to make a smashing success of it. But you won't hear them speaking at the next trade conference, I mean, who's going to go in there telling everyone else to jump on their bandwagon?

So those who are in the know will stay in the know and everyone else will think that the internet is a waste of time.

And that's where me and my ideas come in. I'm working on something that can help bridge some of the gap for those of you who need merchandise and those of you reputable companies that have it to sell. It won't be perfect, but it will be something. I'm hoping to have it up over the next month or so. It won't be a marketplace, it won't be an ecommerce website, it won't be any of that. It won't be super duper technologically advanced cutting edge because that doesn't work either. It will be some blending of old school and new school, a happy medium.

But it requires a commitment on my part to make it work, a commitment to getting people to get involved. Look for it soon. Or a long time from now, depending on how complicated it ends up being to work out the logistics.

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