Small business owners can easily pick from a local pool of business and contract lawyers when they incorporate or at tax time. Entrepreneurs with a unique product, design or manufacturing method often can walk through their own Patent & Trademark applications online. But where do you find answers for sticky employment law questions?

Q: Do all employees need an NDA?
Q: How long can you set a Non-Compete Contract with a new sales hire that will stand in a dispute?
Q: Do old hire, promotion and workplace habits leave your business open to a discrimination suit?
Q: Is there a local attorney experienced in Whistleblower cases for just-in-case legal consultation?
Q: Is there a fair, equitable and legal way to terminate non-performers?

Meet MEL – http://MyEmploymentLawyer.com — a legal information and referral resource developed by Employment Law specialist Neil Klingshirn. The MyEmploymentLawyer (MEL) site is actually a network of employment lawyers across the United States. MEL:

Wholesalers, importers and resellers of apparel, licensed clothing or toys, footwear, accessories, jewelry and general merchandise have specialized marketing needs, online and offline. If you don’t have budget to hire a digital marketing agency — but can no longer self-manage online ad accounts — it’s time to find a search marketing / ad services provider who understands the needs of wholesalers. There is a growing, competitive pool of wholesale publishing, advertising and auction or product sourcing sites that want your business. This checklist will help you find the right partner.

>>> Look for trade/vertical search sites. Online advertising and search marketing developed from retail consumer-focused, direct marketing systems. (Building site traffic and click-throughs; directing visitors from general, consumer search engines to online purchase or shopping cart pages.) But wholesalers and resellers have different buyer decision-making paths; and they measure conversions differently than the retail consumer world.

Times of economic contraction are no time for wholesalers to cut back on marketing and advertising. Entrepreneurs in our industry have to market differently, with more flexibility, more wholesale/retail branding, and by digging out prospects in new places. But even steely-eyed economists do not advise heading to the bunkers or pulling marketing budgets when the going gets tough. Here is why.

Japanese kanji for Crisis is Danger + Opportunity.

With challenge comes opportunity. The Japanese kanji character for Crisis is built from two parts: One icon means “Danger;” the other means “Opportunity.” An English translation might be: Silver lining in the dark cloud, or that bad times contain the seeds for good times.

Nielsen Online’s latest green marketing study measured buzz in social media/blogs who focus on sustainable business: Production Process, Waste, Fair Labor/Trade Procurement, Sourcing and Shipping’s carbon footprint across the globe. That may sound a little crunchy granola to wholesalers focused on price points, breaking lots, shaving dropshipping costs, etc. But aggregate consumer demand for greener lifestyles is marching up the supplier chain, to manufacturers above us and retailers below.

Nielsen’s green buzz report helps us understand what’s important to consumers, by pulling opinions and searches on sustainability from over 70,000,000 blogs, message boards, review sites and communities in Sustainability Through The Eyes and Megaphones of the Blogosphere. Here are highline tips on Green Marketing, from Nielsen Online’s report and other green market watchers. Sustainability blog Triple Pundit says, “For too long business thought of itself as separate.”

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.

“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.)

A B2B survey of media and Internet professionals titled “Vertical Search Report 2008” was recently released by E-consultancy, an online publisher of Internet marketing reports and research, and Convera, a company that customizes specialized search functions for publisher web sites.

Time-challenged web publishers in various commercial and industry segments provided their insights on staying on top of business information, getting the most useful business information quickly and staying up-to-date.

·        Go Vertical for Search Needs.  Search engines and databases that specialize in a business or interest segment bypass more generalized search engines, such as Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft Live Search. Information overload has fragmented even the general search engines into special-focus verticals that are consumer targeted, such as in travel (Hotels.com, Expedia), used vehicles (Autotrader) and books, electronics, entertainment (Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble Online).

“Go Local!” has long been the rallying cry in the whole foods movement (buying most edibles from regional growers, or The 100-Mile Radius Rule among food advocates) and in energy conservation green movements (thinking globally and acting locally).

Given gasoline prices and transportation costs, combined with buyer behaviors that favor local sources, it should be no surprise that buyer, wholesaler and retailer advertising is focusing on regional/local media as well.

Buyers seeking merchandise supply sources are as influenced by local or regional warehouses for faster and less costly shipments, as they are by opportunities to target specific regions with styles and features favored by local potential customers.

5 Ideas to Cut Freight Costs and Boost Your Bottom Line

Jason Konkel

Manager, Supply Chain Operations

GENCO Marketplace

It’s hard to be an expert at everything. But as a small business owner, it could sure help. Take shipping. Every extra dollar you pay for freight eats into your profit margin. Here are some tips to help you reign in freight costs and boost your bottom line.

1) Understand different trucking services and how they are priced

There are lots of ways to move freight, but liquidation loads are shipped primarily by two types of ground freight.

• Less-Than-Truckload (LTL) Carriers are trucking companies that combine smaller shipments from multiple companies on the same truck and make multiple deliveries. These goods move through a network of terminals on route to their final destination. At each terminal, the shipment may be taken off one truck and transferred to another that is loaded with goods destined for the same region. LTL is used by companies without the volume to move full truckloads.

Google announced a new distribution channel for marketers on October 9 that may offer benefits to all interested parties.

First, Google gets content for its AdSense publisher network, plus the opportunity to finally make ad revenues from its ownership of YouTube video site.

Second, search marketers get another channel to distribute their ads and messages to targeted audiences, without developing a new or expensive ad creative campaign.

Third, users get more: More engaging and more relevant content from their Internet Searching & Surfing. User “more” benefits can be assumed from Google’s video distribution plans according to Google Product Marketing Manager Christine Lee, who promises that the new venue for video ads would be “unobtrusive” and “relevant.”

So, what is this announced video distribution opportunity that promises to be all things to all people?

It is believed that holiday sales will be growing by four percent this year to $447.5 billion. According to the National Retail Federation (NRF), this represents the slowest holiday growth since 2002. In a holiday preview called “Hot or Not: A 2007 Holiday Preview,” the NRF’s Scott Silverman said that while this year’s holiday growth is expected to grow more slowly than in past years, it will still be up from 2002, when sales only grew by one percent.

“While this may not be the rosiest of predictions, this is certainly not a ‘sky is falling’ mentality,” cautioned Silverman. “Consumers will be more conservative in their holiday spending, but they will still be out shopping.”

Evening wear and diamonds will likely be driving sales in the fashion and apparel categories, and tailored denim products are also expected to be a hot item among men, women and children alike. Women’s boots will also help drive sales this holiday season, with a shift towards three-quarter length boots rather than knee length.

Attention marketers: Have you given your advertising program, product literature and other customer information a check-up lately? Even new technologies require basic communications strategies and implementation to be considered effective.

I recently needed information about a manufacturer of technology products, so I sought out its Website. I eventually found and landed there (though I think “beached” or “crash-landed” would be a more accurate description.) In over 40 pages of “content”, this is what I learned about the manufacturing company:

• The company makes gizmos, gadgets and widgets.
• The company always ships on time, has a fast shipment policy, can help with custom applications, and conducts seminars.
• The company’s gizmos, gadgets and widgets come in various sizes.
• The company has experienced growth.

More importantly though, here’s what I didn’t find:

By Crystal Silvas

According to a new study by the Email Experience Council, welcome e-mails are apparently on the rise. The Email Experience Council (EEC) is the Direct Marketing Association’s group that focuses on the e-mail marketing industry. According to the study, seventy-two percent of major online retailers send out regular welcome e-mails this year, up from sixty-six percent last year.

In its second annual report titled “Retail Welcome Email Subscription Benchmark Study,” the EEC analyzed the welcome e-mails of one hundred-eighteen of the top online retailers, tracked via RetailEmail.Blogspot. The study identifies a number of best practices and benchmarks in the areas of merchandising, relationship-building, deliverability and CAN-SPAM compliance.

Jeanniey Mullen, EEC founder and a senior partner and executive director for e-mail and dialogue services at OgilvyOne Worldwide said, “There has been a tremendous increase in the adoption of welcome e-mails this year. I think that over the past year e-mail’s positioning has changed from being strictly a direct marketing tool to being more of a customer relationship [component]. A welcome message is a good way to start this relationship.”