Radio Show NEWS Album 02-18-2018

For Your Eyes only 1 News Stories ~~~~~~ Ecommerce Enterprise Radio Show February 18, 2018

Etsy has something new, called In-Person Payments In-Person Payments is a built-in feature of the Sell on Etsy app that allows you sell from your inventory in person … such as when you are selling at a Craft Fair. There are a few ways to make a sale in the Sell on Etsy app: 1. Quick Sale allows you to create an on-the-spot listing by adding a title and price. 2. Sell From Listing allows you to sell items that are cur- rently for sale in your Etsy shop. 3. You can also Sell From History, which allows you to quickly choose from items that were recently sold in person, but which you hadn’t relisted.2

Sell using Etsy card readerThe Sell on Etsy card reader allows you to swipe credit cardswhen selling in person. This is compatible with your iPhone,iPad , or Android device. (Check on Etsy to make sure your de-vice is compatible.)The Sell on Etsy card reader is free! It’s available to sellers inthe US with an active shop.It can also be used with cash payments. Why would you wantto do that? To make it easier to do your bookkeeping, and tokeep your inventory updated on Etsy. 3

Winter Olympics 2018: Why Korean Valentine’s are better Especially if you are a man. Living in South Korea. Which you should be, really. Because Valentine’s Day in South Korea is different in one important respect from Valentine’s Day everywhere else in the world. Men don’t give the gifts. Men get the gifts. Is this a great country, or what? As it happens, South Koreans celebrate a different romance-orient- ed holiday on the 14th of every month. Jan. 14 is Diary Day, when couples and friends give each other blank diaries. April 14 is Black Day, when lonely singles head to restaurants to commiserate while eating black noodles. June 14 is Kiss Day, Dec. 14 is Hug Day, Oct. 14 is Wine Day, and4

Aug. 14 is Green Day, which has nothing to do with the band.But Feb. 14 is Valentine’s Day, when women — and only women —buy gifts (often chocolate) for their sweethearts.It’s a great system, and I’d endorse it fully, except March 14 is WhiteDay, when men are supposed to reciprocate by buying gifts for theirsweethearts and (sigh) are supposed to spend three times as muchas their sweethearts spent on them the previous month.So no need to move to South Korea, men. Just take her to dinnerand watch some figure skating.Chris Knierim and Alexa Scimeca Knierim competed in pairs figureskating for the United States starting on Valentine’s Day. They’remarried. They met as potential skating partners, one thing led to an-other, and now their free skate includes a variation on “UnchainedMelody,” which was their first dance at their wedding. Altogethernow: Awwwww. 5

L.L. Bean sued for scrapping unlimited return policy Victor Biondi, a longtime, loyal Bean customer, called the policy change “deceptive and unfair” in a lawsuit filed in federal court in Chicago, the Press Herald reported. Biondi is seeking certification as a class-action lawsuit so that other jilted customers can join. The Maine-based retail company announced last week that customers would now only have one year to return their goods because people had been abusing the retailer’s legendary policy. But the suit notes that Bean’s policy was a “core component” of its mar- keting and that customers who bought products before the change did so believing they could return them at any time if they weren’t satisfied. “The warranty was a basis of the bargain with the sale of L.L. Bean prod- ucts,” the suit alleges. “Because of L.L. Bean’s unilateral refusal to honor its warranty, plaintiff and the other class members were harmed and have6b een deprived of the benefit of the bargain.”

But the company says the suit is without merit since the new re-striction will apply only to items purchased after Feb. 9, when thepolicy was announced.“The recently filed lawsuit misrepresents the terms of our new returnspolicy.L.L.Bean products bought prior to Feb. 9, 2018 will not be subject to thenew one-year restriction. Proof of purchase will continue to be required.That is what we have consistently told customers since the new policywas announced last Friday.”The 106-year-old company said the return of destroyed items, includingsome purchased at thrift stores, have doubled in the last five years, sur-passing their revenue from their famous “Duck” boot.L.L Bean lost $250 million from items classified as “destroy quality” thatwere sent to the landfill upon being returned. 7

The Race to Sell Chinese Goods to US Customers Bloomberg recently talked with with Richard Liu, founder of JD.com, one of the largest retailers in China, second to Alibaba with 30% market share. They asked about his plans to make its US debut. “Richard Liu’s strategy is simple: sell quality Chinese goods at lower prices than his competitors.” While the focus was on JD.com entering the US market, and in the future becoming a competitor to Amazon, this Liu’s insight paints a different story. The marketplace they will build will inevitably allow any retailer to join, but JD.com focus is on creating a channel for Chinese goods to US customers. Businessmen and the media in the USA talk a big game about manufacturing ethics, and how unfair it is to local retailers. But the customers want a $9.99 t-shirt. Ethical products are fine, but low price is best. Most customers do not care where the products are coming from. Majority of8

goods are made outside of the US anyway.However China is also the largest source of counterfeit products. Reportreleased by U.S. Chamber of Commerce estimated that 86% of all seizedcounterfeits originate in China and Hong Kong.Wish … a shopping app … built for selling those $9.99 t-shirts for sale, has600,000 merchants … most of which are based in China.And JD is heavily invested in WISH.Richard Liu says they can’t offer two-day free shipping like Amazon, but theprice is lower.He also says that other major marketplaces have their share of Chinese goodstoo. More than 35% of the top ten thousand sellers offering products on eBay.com are based in China.Amazon marketplace is at least a third from China too.He says, not surprisingly many customers are willing to wait longer to payless. It’s for the marketplaces to solve the mountain of counterfeits problem, 9

International cyber crime ring smashed after more than $530 million stolen US authorities have indicted 36 people for stealing more than $530 million from victims across the world in one of the “largest cyberfraud enterprises ever prosecuted.” In a statement, US investigators claimed the accused were taking part in a massive operation known as the Infraud Organization, which stole and then sold other people’s personal information, including credit card and banking information. The arrests mark one of the largest cyberfraud enterprise prosecutions ever undertaken by the US Department of Justice However it is believed the group had intended to cause losses totaling more than $2.2 billion during their seven years of operation. Authorities have already arrested 13 people from a range of countries in- cluding the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom, France and Italy.10

The Infraud Organization has been in operation since October 2010, when itwas launched by a 34-year-old Ukrainian man, Svyatoslav Bondarenko.He had wanted to grow the organization into the internet’s largest “carding”group -- that is, a criminal group who buy retail purchases with counterfeit orstolen credit card information.Their motto was, “In Fraud We Trust.”There were 10,901 registered members of the Infraud Organization as ofMarch 2017, who were divided into specific roles.They ranged from the “administrators” who oversaw the organization’s stra-tegic planning and approved membership, all the way down to the “mem-bers” who used the Infraud forum to facilitate their criminal activities.Law enforcement agencies from across the world collaborated on the inves-tigation into Infraud, including Italy, Australia, the United Kingdom, Franceand Luxembourg, among many others. 11

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