Small Business Stories - The Gift and Home channel

Small Business Stories - The Gift and Home channel Ivy Hartman: Hello and welcome to sbtv.com I’m Ivy Hartman. My guess today is Leslie Nathan- Street. Leslie is the president of the gift and home channel, which is video-based internet site providing information to independent retailers in order for them to help them grow and prosper. Leslie welcome to sbtv.com. Leslie Nathan- Street: Thank you Ivy and I’m happy to be here. Ivy Hartman: Leslie your channels really fulfilling a specific need for small businesses across the country, tell us more about how the idea for the gift and home channel evolved. Leslie Nathan- Street: Well back in 2000, we launch our sister company which is the far countries and it is a website for independent retailers to order wholesale merchandise 24 hours a day, seven days a week. What they found on this site was that people are sending in questions and asking you know things about what’s going on and it was from those questions that the realization came that we really needed educational channel. Ivy Hartman: So you started and you launch a channel but you have to go with 200 educational segments and you were getting some of these questions but how did you narrow down to 200 that seems a lot to actually launch with how did you choose the 200 segments that you’d focused on. Leslie Nathan- Street: Well, we here in partnership with the organization called the gift and home trade association mainly made up of manufactures and manufactures reps and the gifts and home industry and they are put together in advisory board of independent retailers, who helped them figure out what they should be doing in response to the independent retailers than their needs. We sat down with those independent retailers and really discuss with them, what is it that we should be focusing on for our channel so they helped us and also they speak all cross the country at seminars and so they really have their fingers on the pulse of what’s going on and the independent retailing environment. Ivy Hartman: Now how did you get the experts that you feature on the channels that are addressing some of this questions and educational segments? Leslie Nathan- Street: Well these advisory board members for the gift and hotel association are experts. Also I’ve been in the business so I know people and we’ve tapped in to other individuals within the gift and home trade that our experts and want to speak to the needs of the independent retailers. Ivy Hartman: Well Leslie the retail industry is and independent retailers are small business owners typically across the country. How are small business owners and retailers responding to the channel? Leslie Nathan- Street: we have gone an incredibly positive response; the independent retail environment is very autonomous. I mean really they are individuals, store owners who don’t have a lot of opportunity to communicate with each other. We’ve got in such responses as I never knew how much I didn’t know or I’ve been in business so long and I as embarrassed and I have to ask that kind of question but now you provide me an opportunity and a resource so that I can get the answers that I really need. Ivy Hartman: Well that part of the question because on the side you are providing opportunities and resources to viewers in the forms of video content but also blogs talk about the blogs. Leslie Nathan- Street: Well we have whole community aspect and that is really so important for independent retailers again they are autonomous they do not have a connection point. They do not have a connection and they don’t have partners a lot of times. There are small business owner who’s out there doing it all by themselves and the blogs allow them to ask questions of other retailers who already have been to those issues and to those and concerns and can tell another retailer how they might handle that concern and how they might better what they’re doing. Ivy Hartman: Now, you’ve created a community and in order to talk about the community bases of that small business owner will use the site effectively. Leslie Nathan- Street: Well basically, they would come on the side and we have a search navigation, so once they’re registered they would be able to access all the whole site and they would just type in — Ivy Hartman: Which is free? Leslie Nathan- Street: It is free which is actually great and basically what they would do is they would type in what ever their concern or issue was into the search bar and it would bring them to all the content that has to do with that particular topic and so they’ll be able to look through the areas of topics because we have descriptions next to each of the areas that brings them to. So they can really prove since what is it that they need to focus on what’s really going to help them with that pinpoint that they are talking about. Ivy Hartman: Gosh it’s awesome because it’s nice to have a question and your simple concise answer right there in a video format or a blog, format which is really awesome. I know that you guys were launching a new partnership with sbtv.com and the home and gift channel and you are brining some content to our website to share and there’s five key areas that we’re going to be letting our viewers have access through sbtv.com what are those. Leslie Nathan- Street: Well we have different videos that we’re actually bringing to the channel through you and may our building a better business plan and how to hire attracting a superstar, how to buy adjusting your open to buy visual merchandising 101 which is cooperative merchandising and creating a frequent buyers program. Ivy Hartman: That sounds awesome. So tell me it’s certainly we’re pertain it to not just retailers but any kind of small business owner but you guys care to really specifically to read. We do cater to retailers but at the same time, much of our content really relates to small business owners because we have content on how to hire, how to fire, the back end of any type of small business. So yes although we are about the gift industry and owning an independent retail shop, small business is can benefit it as well. Well Leslie thank you so much for being here today to walk us through the gift and home channel for independent retailers, we’re so happy to will the offers of your content to our viewers as well and for all the gift and home channel has to offer you can visit their website at www.giftandhomechannel.com. Thanks for watching.