Oh, those privacy whiners. Don’t they know that entire neighborhoods of the Online Marketing village are built on Internet behaviors – subject preferences, web browsing habits, search requests? Don’t they realize that behind-the-screen behavioral targeting is for their own benefit, to save them time and match them up with the most relevant products, services and information on the web? To better serve them?

Privacy Is In the Eye of Beholder
Ask the Electronic Privacy Information Center – EPIC – who told the European Parliament that movement toward the IPv6 model means that user IP addresses will be more personally identifiable than ever. Or ask the European Union, which considers an IP address personal data when it can be used for any personal identification. You can even ask the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, though it says it’s not sure if IP address, harvested by search engines and ad-serving tech for local/geo-targeting, are really personal and subject to privacy rules.

For entrepreneurs searching for low-cost merchandise to resell, one of the most plentiful categories of goods is retail store returns. With the right approach, you can turn these returns into big profits.

Why do retailers liquidate returns?

Retailers are not able to put store returns back on the shelf and sell them as new. So, they return product to the vendor, dispose of it or liquidate it. Even if a vendor issues a credit for the merchandise, the company will sometimes tell the retailer to keep the goods to avoid freight and processing costs. Disposal of returned merchandise was once very common, but re-marketing of returns and other distressed inventory has become a large and growing industry. Retailers now know there is demand for store returns and try to maximize their recovery value on these goods through liquidation.

Availability of Quality Merchandise, Leading Brands and Trendy Items Attract a High Volume of Buyers –Including Top Retailers who are new to the Show

The Off-Price Specialist Show was pleased to wrap up its 27th Fashion Week Show with highly successful results reported by exhibitors and buyers alike. The buyers, including an influx of new buyers from new industry sectors came to the Off-Price Show to fill immediate inventory needs and find great value on quality apparel. 1,000 buyers showed up in the first hour of the show on opening day – the highest number that show registration had experienced in a long time. Many of the exhibitors were said to have had either their best first day ever or their best show ever.

“We attribute the success of the February Show to two factors,” said new Show Director Julie Ichiba, “ the immediate needs of the retailers who under-bought after a poor holiday season, and the buyers, both new and old, who truly understand the opportunities that exist in our marketplace.”

“Flip flops and sandal sales have started to peak 6 weeks earlier than in past years” says Kevin Ryan, Merchandise Manager for www.dollardays.com . “I attribute this to customers looking for that key item that is going to get them out of this tough sales period the country finds itself in” comments Ryan. “What we are seeing in early sales”, says SVP Sales, Ken Cisneros, “is a switch from just buying the basic to a heavier assortment of the fancier styles and designs. My sales team attributes that to their customer base of independent stores who compete with the chains, needing to show their customers that they, too, have fashion at a price. Because of the quick reorders of the fancier sandals we are seeing at www.dollardays.com , we know this strategy is working”.

One of the best strategies for growing a business, launching a new product or building your customer base is to give away valuable stuff. Such freebies might be a test version of your product, a trial product sample, an insider’s look at how your product lines get to market, hot tips on latest trends and up-to-date training for sales reps. (More suggested giveaways-to-get-customers below.)

Offline merchandisers use this giveaway-to-get-customers free samples technique. Haven’t you tripped over smiling food samplers in large grocery and boutique markets? Who can resist a coupon for Freebies or Massive Discounts, whether they pop up on a receipt print-out or a Sunday newspaper ad drop or, these days, are fed to a willing potential customer’s mobile phone? (With mobile geo-targeting, some ad networks claim to push the freebie coupon to a Whole Foods searcher just as he or she nears organic food advertisers’ stores.)

The Old Time Marketing Music — wisdom from direct marketing gurus, offline and on — is that hot-hot-hot trends get kick-started by an Elite Crew of Early Adopters (like the rebirth of Hush Puppies among NYC hipsters that brought the comfort shoes back from near-death in 1994 to 5,000 percent sales).

Another Old Time Marketing Motif is that fashion and lifestyle trends are birthed by big-name celebrities, like Madonna long ago … a simple Italo-American song-and-dance girl who suddenly and explosively hit the pop charts. And made steel-tipped bras at dance raves all la moda.

Ferggitabout it, says a paraphrased Duncan Watts, an Australian digging in global trendsetter marketing mines in New York. One of Watts’ current corporate social marketing clients is Yahoo!

Top Ten Wholesale is running a raffle at the ASD/AMD TradeShow in Las Vegas for buyers who fill out a short survey!  An iPod Nano and 3 iTunes gift cards are up for grabs on March 4th at the Publishers Pavilion at the Sands.  Check back here for the winners on Tuesday!