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I have been working on this article for my newsletter for the last 4 days and I just couldn’t get a handle on it. Then I went back to my simple formula of just writing about the things that happen during the last week. Duh! I launched The Retailer’s Advantage this week and the lives of so many of us will never be the same.  There’s a quote I heard years ago that said, “Once your mind expands with knowledge, it can never contract to the way it once was.”

This interactive site is expanding  everyone’s knowledge base. We are all learning new things and ways different retailers think and approach the same challenges. A craft retailer is learning from a garden supply company, museum stores are learning from tack stores (horse supply), apparel retailers are learning from  farm stores and all five of us involved in the content and management of this site are learning from each other.

We have created a community that will only grow and expand, not by Rick Segel directing but by you, the members of the community, directing the focus. They say that once America was a melting pot of people. Now we say we are creating a beautiful mosaic of people. The Retailers Advantage is creating its own mosaic of knowledge and ideas from contributions of both staff and readers.

Before anyone thinks that this is any type of hype or promotion for The Retailers Advantage, it’s not. But it is a hype to challenge all of you to look at your business, your employees, and your customers as your community. A community that is respected by each person within the community.

Is this idea new? No. We lived in a town and the people that lived there made up our community. However, the speed, the low cost, and the ease of world-wide communication have changed all of that.  Our community is no longer blended by geographical or demographic information. We are now together by our interests, our passions, our wants and our desires.

This creates boundless opportunity for the business that can create and service their community. It is a formula that can easily be repeated. Where do you start? What do you start with? That’s easy - you start with one customer at a time and give, give, give, and then give a little more. And some day all of us can share a bountiful harvest from all the giving we have done. 

So I smile when someone says how easy it was to create and launch The Retailer’s Advantage website. It was easy - all I had to do was speak to over 1900 audiences, collect 10,000 email addresses, write and distribute over 200 articles over a 4-year period, put together a team who could rally behind the vision, and then become an overnight success and receive letters that say, “due to your inspiration, my business has really taken a turn in a positive direction”. It has been a wonderful journey that you can also apply to your business to take it to the next level. And remember “measure your successes by the number of obstacles that you have overcome within yourself for they are the testament to your courage and strength”.