Getting Ready for Holiday 2007

| Curt Barry

Now is the best time to start planning holiday 2007 because your people will remember vividly the good and bad anecdotal incidents from last year and you will also have the operational and benchmark data available.

WEBS Weaves Retail Magic With Yarn Harlot Event

| Heather Retzlaff

Ordinary citizens of Northampton, MA, may not have known who the Yarn Harlot is, but the more than 600 knitting enthusiasts who converged on the town of 29,000 people on May 30 sure did.

On Racking and Shelving

| Sam Flanders

Don’t know your racking from your shelving? Here’s a primer:

A New Twist on Automated Storage and Retrieval

| Sam Flanders

There’s a new twist out there on the automated storage and retrieval system (AS/RS). Mini-AGV (automatic guided vehicle) systems are an alternative to mini-load AS/RS

Show Me the Data: Compiled Lists Aren’t Commodities

| Bill Singleton

There are roughly 55,000 lists for rent today. About 24,000 lists are business and government focused; response, subscription, and compiled files. The mailers and list brokers I have worked with often talk about the compiled files as commodities. Different business-to-business lists characterized by similar demographics such as: standard industry classification (SIC) codes, employee sizes, annual sales, and geographic regions are expected to perform equally well.

Financial Update: Where Are the Dealmakers?

| Jim Tierney

Last year at this time Craig Battle, managing director of investment bank Tucker Alexander, described the level of first-quarter industry mergers and

Packing It In

| MCM staff

It’s not always easy to find innovation in packing materials. After all, how many times can you reinvent the packing peanut or improve upon plastic air-pillow

Incents and Sensibility

| Mark Del Franco

Incentive programs have been a blessing for home decor and gifts merchant Home Interiors. Thanks to performance bonuses tied to improving inventory accuracy, the Carrollton, TX-based company was able to eliminate taking physical inventory each year.

Of Brownies and “Survivor”

| Mark Del Franco

The way to an audience’s heart is through its stomach. That may be why David Kravetz, cofounder of Phoenix-based Fairytale Brownies, emerged victorious from the popular session

Filling the Void, Part Two

| Sam Flanders

This is the second in a series on how to pack and fill parcels before shipping them.