» 2009 » September

Kansas City Gift Show
10/2/2009 – 10/5/2009
6800 West 115 St., Overland Park, KS 66211
Phone: 913-491-6688; Fax: 913-491-1279
Featuring many handcrafted product lines such as giftware, fine art, country accents, seasonal decor, and collectibles, folk art, wearables, garden items, gourmet foods and popular merchandise from candles to music shown by individual exhibitors, regional and national sales representatives.

Gem, Jewelry & Lapidary Trade Show
10/2/2009 – 10/4/2009
P.O. Box 98, Flora, MS 39071-0098
Phone: 601-879-8832; Fax: 601-879-3282
This show specializes in gems, jewelry, lapidary equipment and specimens. **** ALL G&LW SHOWS ARE WHOLESALE ONLY – COPY OF BUSINESS OR RESALE CERTIFICATE REQUIRED – DATES ARE SUBJECT TO CHANGE ****

Minneapolis Mart Home & Gift Show
10/4/2009 – 10/6/2009
10301 Bren Rd. West, Minneapolis, MN 55343
Phone: 800-626-1298, 952-932-7200; Fax: 952-932-0847
Our Mart is a permanent facility. We feature products in Gift, Apparel, Souvenir, Jewelry, Accessories and Home and Garden.

Southern Women’s Show – Richmond
10/8/2009 – 10/11/2009
810 Baxter Street, Charlotte, NC 28202
Phone: 800-849-0248 ext. 123; Fax: 704-376-6345
The show highlights areas of interest to women. These are on-site cosmetic makeovers, ongoing fashion shows, health information and testing, a celebrity kitchen, business and career options, fitness equipment, educational seminars, food and product sampling, and accessories for the home!

Gem, Jewelry & Lapidary Trade Show
10/9/2009 – 10/10/2009
P.O. Box 98, Flora, MS 39071-0098
Phone: 601-879-8832; Fax: 601-879-3282
This show specializes in gems, jewelry, lapidary equipment and specimens. **** ALL G&LW SHOWS ARE WHOLESALE ONLY – COPY OF BUSINESS OR RESALE CERTIFICATE REQUIRED – DATES ARE SUBJECT TO CHANGE ****

GTS Greensboro Jewelry & Accessories Expo
October 10-12 2009
Greensboro Coliseum Complex, Greensboro North Carolina
Phone: 770-410-9771, Fax: 866-807-0808
Wholesale Trade Expo

Galveston Gift & Resort Merchandise Show
10/11/2009 – 10/13/2009
1690 Roberto Blvd., Suite 111, Kennesaw, GA 30144
Phone: 800-318-2238; Fax: 678-285-7469
Perfectly timed regional show to help the region’s retailers restock before the busy holiday and tourist seasons.

Emerald Coast Gift & Resort Show
10/18/2009 – 10/21/2009
1690 Roberts Blvd. NW, Suite 111, Kennesaw, GA30144
Phone: 678-285-3976; Fax: 678-285-7469
Retailers will now find a great selection of resort and tourist merchandise, souvenirs, beach items, resort wear, T-shirts, general giftware, logo products, fashion accessories, shell items, coastal and nautical themed products, toy and games and much more. This show is designed to give retailers from the Florida Panhandle and surrounding areas to New Orleans the ideal chance to buy last-minute holiday merchandise and plan their spring and summer resort seasons without the hassle and cost of traveling away from their businesses.

International Home Furnishings Market
10/19/2009 – 10/25/2009
P.O. Box 5243, High Point, NC 27261
Phone: 336-869-1000; Fax: 336-889-7460
This wholesale market show is open to retailers, furniture dealers, interior designers, and architects and features furnishings, floor coverings, lighting, upholstery, gift and decorative accessories.

Denver Apparel and Accessory Market
10/23/2009 – 10/26/2009
451 East 58th Ave., # 4270, Denver, CO 80216
Phone: 303-292-6278 ext. 5225; Fax: 303-297-8473
Sales representatives of women’s, men’s and children’s apparel and accessory manufacturers provide retailers the resources needed for the upcoming season.

GTS Charlotte Jewelry & Accessories Expo
October 24-26 2009
Charlotte Convention Center, Charlotte, North Carolina
Phone: 770-410-9771, Fax: 866-807-0808
Wholesale Trade Expo

Gem, Jewelry & Lapidary Trade Show
10/27/2009 – 10/28/2009
P.O. Box 98, Flora, MS 39071-0098
Phone: 601-879-8832; Fax: 601-879-3282
This show specializes in gems, jewelry, lapidary equipment and specimens. **** ALL G&LW SHOWS ARE WHOLESALE ONLY – COPY OF BUSINESS OR RESALE CERTIFICATE REQUIRED – DATES ARE SUBJECT TO CHANGE ****

Transworld Merchandise Center – October Midwest Market Days
10/27/2009 – 10/29/2009
TransWorld Merchandise Center, Inc
2200 & 2400 East Devon Ave.
De Plains, IL 60018
Phone: 312-201-3800; Fax: 312-201-3803
Brand name closeout inventories sell out fast, and our exhibitors’ inventories are always changing. We bring you 7 events per year so you can find the right merchandise – just when you need it.

Gem, Jewelry & Lapidary Trade Show
10/30/2009 – 10/31/2009
P.O. Box 98, Flora, MS 39071-0098
Phone: 601-879-8832; Fax: 601-879-3282
This show specializes in gems, jewelry, lapidary equipment and specimens. **** ALL G&LW SHOWS ARE WHOLESALE ONLY – COPY OF BUSINESS OR RESALE CERTIFICATE REQUIRED – DATES ARE SUBJECT TO CHANGE ****

Offinger’s Handcrafted Marketplace
10/31/2009 – 11/1/2009
1100-H Brandywine Blvd., Zanesville, OH 43702
Phone: 740-452-4541; Fax: 740-452-2552
Wholesale Cash and Carry Trade Show.

Hawaii Market November Merchandise Expo
10/31/2009 – 11/2/2009
P.O. Box 1247, Kaneohe, HI 96744
Phone: 800-525-5275, 808-254-1773; Fax: 808-254-3324
Cash & Carry Merchandise Expos are a "one-stop" shopping opportunity for the business community of Hawaii and the Pacific Basin. Business owners, managers, professionals, and trade buyers will be shopping for values on hundreds of products they can use for their businesses or resale. Buyers may take immediate delivery of merchandise purchased.

This was just too good to pass up the chance to post it here! This is why some of the "good sellers" can not compete on eBay…Why? Maybe its because you got thieves and criminals promoted as trusted sellers on eBay. Yah think?!?

Waterbury woman faces larceny charges in connection with thefts from CVS, sales on eBay. (COURTESY OF WEST HARTFORD POLICE DEPARTMENT / September 24, 2009)

By DAVID OWENS The Hartford Courant

WEST HARTFORD; – A Waterbury woman who police say made her living selling beauty and other products on the auction website eBay had very low overhead.

That’s because the items she sold were shoplifted from CVS stores throughout the state, police said. Dana Giacobini, 41, of 28 Wesley St., Waterbury, faced arrest by West Hartford police in shoplifting incidents in June and July, but had also drawn the attention of CVS loss prevention officials.
"It started off as a fairly routine shoplifting case," said West Hartford police Det. Sgt. Frank Fallon. Then West Hartford detectives began working with CVS security officials, who developed information that Giacobini was possibly selling items stolen from CVS on eBay.

"Based on the information gained through the eBay investigation we were able to get a search warrant for the suspect’s [apartment] in Waterbury," Fallon said. When they raided Giacobini’s home, they found boxes and boxes of merchandise — everything from home blood pressure and diabetic monitoring kits to Oil of Olay and Burt’s Bees products. There also were allergy medications, fertility monitor kits, perfumes, nail polish and a variety of skin lotions, Fallon said.

Police are still taking inventory of the van-load of merchandise recovered from Giacobini’s apartment, but estimate it is worth at least $25,000, he said.

Police said eBay records show that Giacobini has sold nearly $174,000 worth of merchandise since 2007.
"This was no small operation," Fallon said. Police also found a mailing operation in Giacobini’s apartment, including about 40 FedEx mailing boxes addressed to locations all over the country.

"She has no job," Fallon said of Giacobini. "Whatever else she could have been selling, no matter what it was, she had no ability to legally obtain it."

On several websites, Giacobini listed her business at the Wesley Street address. "I buy wholesale and resell online. I am a single owner/operator and have a small business," she wrote in several online sales forums.
Giacobini was arraigned Thursday on charges of fourth-degree larceny and third-degree larceny and her bail was set at $95,000. She is due back in court Nov. 2.

Copyright © 2009, The Hartford Courant

The first thing I did was download the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor to check my system. In general, if your PC can run Windows Vista, it can run Windows 7. But if you’re not running Windows Vista, or are just not sure if your system is ready to run Windows 7, there’s a quick way to do a simple check.

Just download, install, and run the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor. You’ll get a report telling you if your PC can run Windows 7 and if there are any known compatibility issues. If an issue can be resolved, you’ll get suggestions for next steps. For example, it may let you know that you need an updated driver for your printer and where to get it.

 Download the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor Beta

So my results are shown above. I do NOT use Microsoft Outlook or any other MS Mail client, so I am ready to go! Stay glued to ColderICE.com as I will continue this series as I begin installation of the new system.

Yes, the big day for Microsoft is October 22, 2008. That is the day for Windows 7 to roll out on the market. Is it ready for prime time? I am going to find out and let you know!!!

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Are you ready for the Google Wave? I am. I really hope that I get an invite to the public preview. I signed up way back when they first showed this off at the DevCon, but have yet to be invited.

Starting Wednesday, September 30 Google will be sending out more than 100,000 invitations to preview Google Wave to:

• Developers who have been active in the developer preview we started back in June
• The first users who signed up and offered to give feedback on wave.google.com
• Select customers of Google Apps

Google Wave is a lot more useful if your friends, family and colleagues have it too. This, of course, will just be the beginning. If all goes well Google says they will soon be inviting many more to try out Google Wave.

So here comes the preview. This means that Google Wave isn’t quite ready for prime time. Not yet, anyway. Since first unveiling the project back in May, they have focused on scalability, stability, speed and usability. Those in this public beta will still experience occasional downtime, a crash every now and then, part of the system being a bit sluggish and some of the user interface being, well, quirky.

Despite all this, we believe you will find that Google Wave has the potential for making you more productive when communicating and collaborating. Even when you’re just having fun! We use it ourselves everyday for everything from planning pub crawls to sharing photos, managing release processes and debating features to writing design documents. In fact, we collaborated on this very blog post with several colleagues in Google Wave.

So get set to hear all the news and of course the trending topics on Twitter about Google Wave going public starting tomorrow!

By Cliff Aliperti

Within the past 24 hours I wrote:

I just can’t help having a nagging feeling that I got my money back all too easily."

And Recycled Thoughts from a Retro Gamer wrote:

This frightens me more than any other potential eBay selling pitfall.

While a day or two earlier Chef Ralph wrote:

E-Bay I see why you are a success. this type of service is far and few between…Thank you

Chef Ralph was a buyer, Retro Gamer wrote about a seller, and I’m primarily a seller who in this case was a buyer. Three different perspectives on the same policy, eBay’s new Resolution process.

The buyer, Chef Ralph, had the same experience I had as a buyer wherein contact with the seller was lost and "A week later E-Bay sent a follow up, and If you clicked ‘Still no resolution’, it gave you a phone number to call." You can see the details of his transaction inside his post, but the heart of the matter for us is that Chef Ralph presents himself as a long time eBayer, but one who just buys and sells a little bit here and there. He admitted to seeing some red flags along the way, but he trusted eBay and PayPal’s claims along the way and in the end that trust was verified to him by them righting his wrong and refunding his money.

Our friend Dan, perhaps better known by you as @magisterrex on Twitter, tells a different tale on his Retro Gamer site. First this was an older transaction, one handled under the old system in which a sometimes seller sold goods to a pro who resells goods from his own eBay account. In this story the buyer claimed items were not as described, and despite photos proving otherwise PayPal took his side and not only debited the seller’s account $770.10 to refund the buyer, but let the buyer keep the goods!

My perspective fell somewhere in between. I’m quite active as a buyer and a seller with multiple eBay accounts having 5 and 4-digit figure feedback counts. I know what I’m doing as a buyer and I have a pretty keen sensitivity towards sellers as in the past 10 years I’ve likely encountered most of their problems.

My story centered around about 50 bucks involved in an international transaction ended back in June, but which fell under the new resolution process by the time I took action. I had the same experience as Chef Ralph: I called the number when prompted, had about a 6 or 7 minute conversation in my case, though that was largely me extending the process, was told I’d have a refund and my money was back in my PayPal account in 24 hours.

Now I’ve pasted the exact nuts and bolts of the process below, or you can read my entire story about the transaction in my original post on The Collectors Site, but I’d like to dwell for a moment on these different perspectives and how this process is going to effect us, and eBay, going forward.

First, the cynics among us my disqualify the story from Retro Gamer because it fell under the old process. But the point is, the new process is a lot easier for buyers to get their money back. This leads us back to Chef Ralph’s post where a satisfied buyer goes so far as to pat eBay on the back and thank them–this, as we know, is exactly what eBay wants, happy buyers.

I want happy buyers too, but has the scale slid too far over? Has eBay guaranteed not only happy buyers but damn happy scammers as well?

If eBay assumed the risk on the two more current transactions–and by "assumed the risk" I mean paid the buyers back out of their own pockets and not the seller’s–then that’s great. That’s how they should be involved with transactions occurring on their own platform. But the question remains, what happens to the seller? I honestly lack the stones to write my seller and find out what, if anything, happened during the process to him (though if it went the way of the rest of the transaction he’d likely ignore my email anyway). As you’ll see below in my conversation with the eBay customer service rep, what happens on the other side of the transaction, the seller’s side, was made very unclear.

From that conversation it’s very clear that sellers can’t have too many of these strikes against their record and remain on the site, but it’s a mystery as to how many is too many. It is easy to see though that once word gets out too many is going to come all too fast. Is eBay willing to bend or revise their process not if, but when this proves true?

Awhile back John Lawson, owner of this colderICE blog, had mentioned (somewhere) the idea of the pre-approved buyer. That may actually be what’s necessary under this system, but seller–and eBay–trust me, we don’t want this. In this day and age we should be finding ways to lower barriers to purchase, not erecting new barriers, but this policy makes that impossible. (Though one simple suggestion along this line would be to force buyers to have their registered names and addresses be their actual names and addresses, a problem I ran into myself recently).

The threat to eBay itself here is that it becomes some kind of online 5-and-dime, where sellers of high ticket items disappear and sellers of lower value items like myself put a cap on purchases to avoid sending too much to one buyer. A fear of selling too much? How counter-intuitive is that?

Update #1: Potentially good news over on Retro Gamer, eBay’s Griff has stepped in with a comment and request for more information.  eBay might fix this one!

Update #2: Between the time of my first and final drafts Chris Dawson of Tamebay has posted on this topic as well, a great read, especially for the eBay.uk perspective.

Through an excerpt of my original post on The Collectors Site, here’s the process:

Here are all of the questions on the new Resolution Request form:

Did you not receive the item or is there a problem with it?

Do you have the package tracking number?

Have you tried contacting the seller?

How did you contact the seller?

Did the seller respond?

Is the seller willing to resolve the issue or did they give you options? (enter details in next question)

Tell us what happened in your communication with the seller. Please be as detailed as possible since we will use this information to resolve your case.

How can eBay help you?

After submitting I was informed that they’d copy the seller on the request and work with me to get me my item or my money back.

eBay sent 2 follow-up emails asking how it was going. The second such email had a couple of big buttons asking whether or not things had been worked out. I clicked no, and was sent to a page showing this:

What the hell I figured, I called and was connected pretty quickly (under 5 minutes) to a very polite and well-spoken gentleman who asked for my eBay ID, the transaction number and some personal information. He asked if I’d paid through PayPal, which I did. He asked for my story, and I gave him the nuts and bolts of the above, to which he replied, “Oh, you’ve waited more than enough time, you should have your item,” and then something to the effect of “let’s get to work on getting your money back.”

Explaining the situation in further detail I told him that I still preferred the item to the refund and noting the seller’s high feedback number I explained that I really didn’t think he’d set out to rip me off, I just hadn’t received anything for my money yet. The customer service rep repeated that I’d waited long enough and asked for some info on my PayPal account.

We got right to the point of the refund when I interrupted: “Just a second. Again, I think this is a good seller on the whole, I’ve just had a bad experience. My doing this isn’t going to get him kicked off eBay or anything, is it?” The rep told me probably not. I explained that I was a seller myself and so I had some empathy in this situation. So I pushed a little more and asked, “It takes more than one of these to get you tossed off the site, doesn’t it?” He hemmed and hawed some giving me the general impression that while he either didn’t know for sure or wasn’t at liberty to say chances were that it’d take more than one of these black marks to ban the seller.

I had more questions, but honestly I felt A) I wasn’t going to receive this item and B) the seller dropped the ball not replying to my later email request, so rather than press forward with more and somehow talk myself out of this refund I gave permission for the rep to proceed. He told me it would take something like 5-7 business days for payment to arrive, but actually the money was in my PayPal account by the next morning.

The organizers of a brand new event in Atlanta went all out to put on a high caliber show for the technology community around social media and social marketing. The New Media Atlanta event was billed as:

The New Media Atlanta conference is a high level, business dialog about how social media is changing marketing and messaging – and in fact, changing the nature of all communications.   We’ll talk about strategies to leverage its power to build your company, product, brand, service, etc.

You’ll have an opportunity to ask your burning questions of the speaker panel and get real answers.

The opening speech by the organizers detailed a vision to make New Media Atlanta a yearly event on caliber with South by Southwest (SXSW). That is one grand order for sure! That is really like wanting your garage band to be U2?!? Ambition is a good thing, but flash can not make over substance and there was not as much substance as SXSW. Personally, I would not ever compared this show to SXSW were it not for the mention of it by the organizers.

Having said that, the even staff was GREAT, the venue was superb and overall the day was well organized and the presentations kept on time for the most part. Chris Brogan was the highlight for the event and he did not miss a beat! Once Chris took the state the crowd settled in for some particular strategies and approaches for social media.

The highs were the keynote by Chris Brogan, the small business presentation by Jonathan Baker of Monday Night Brewing was outstanding and a panel session with executives from Rubbermaid, Turner TNT, and Coke was VERY informative on strategy, ROI and techniques for social media engagement.

The areas for improvement would be, NOT to listen to the noise going on from the detractors. The event planners were overly focused on negative comments being made anonymously in chat rooms. They would bring then get onstage and make comment and even ADJUST the program based on comments by a small minority. The acknowledgment of this Back Noise became VERY distracting to the entire event. So the majority of the audience was subject to comments made anonymously by a few silly attendees and that threw off the "spirit" of the room in my opinion. What was a little know chat room became the focus of the event by the end of the day and that sentiment was fueled by many presenters and the organizers. Note to self…when you have  99% positive comments, do NOT focus in on pleasing the 1%, keep the 99% happy!

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The Conversation Prism by Brian Solis and Jesse Thomas

By Cliff Aliperti

Set it and forget it, right?  That’s the kind of simplicity we all want these days, and Storytlr.com has definitely filled that need for me in pulling together everything I do online.

Founded in 2008 Storytlr comes to us from two person team based out of Belgium and the Netherlands.  From the Storytlr Presskit:

Storytlr is reinventing the personal page by bringing together life-streaming, blogging, and social interactions. It lets you create, aggregate and mashup web content into a highly personalized page. Link it to your own domain, style it, share it. This becomes the place where you define your online identity.

Prior to finding Storytlr I’d been pointing people to my Google Profile to show off all I do online.  Now I definitely believe you should still have a Google Profile because, well, it’s Google, and no matter what you do online your Google Profile is always going to show up on page 1 when someone Googles you.

But that’s just a portal to what you’re doing.  I’d also tried mashing together my online presence with a Tumblr site.  While I like what Tumblr does I prefer the way Storytlr does it:

Beyond pulling in multiple blog posts, Tweets from multiple Twitter identities, my Stumbles, Google favorites, videos, and even eBay listings, what I love about Storytlr is that it allows me to arrange the page exactly how I want to present it to you.

It’s fast and it’s easy to set up.  I think I mention I did mine in one night and it took me about an hour and a half.  It imports all of your old info from the selected sites, allows you to organize it, archive it, and even back it up (worried about lost Tweets?  no more). 

Besides pulling in info from everywhere you are online you can also post links, videos, audio, blog posts direct to your Storytlr site.  There’s simple Disqus integration for commenting and making your site itself more social.

You can even set it up with your own domain name, which gave me the excuse to break out the oh-so-vain cliffaliperti.com.

The most amazing part of Storytlr…it’s free!  Actually, I even prefer the tabbing and organization to the price because (shh, don’t tell them) I’d definitely pay for this service. 

The following video is just under 5 minutes, but it’s enough time to give you a quick walk through both the front and back ends of my Storytlr site.  Have a look:

Sign-up here: Storytlr.com

Back in the day I saw a video by my boy Gary Vaynerchuk (author of Crush It!: Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion). I love to listen and watch him, he was one of the first to usher me into the power of social marketing.

Back in the day, Gary made a video about the power of http://Seach.Twitter.com and why it is MORE relevant for information that even Google.com

So here is an illustration of that principle in a very IN YOUR FACE kind of demonstration. Look guys, if you don’t "GET IT, you had better GET IT!"

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