Retailer Spotlight – Memories Bridal and Evening Wear

admin wrote this on Mar 24 |

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Michigan Wedding Dresses

courtesy: Memories Bridal and Evening Wear

Over the past year and a half, I’ve had the privilege of working with Derek from Memories Bridal and Evening Wear in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Memories carries fabulous Wedding Dresses and Bridal Gowns for brides in Michigan. So if you happen to be looking for wedding dresses in Michigan, Memories is THE place to go.

I caught up with Derek and asked him a few questions about BridalLive.

Tom: Tell us a little about your shop? How did you get into bridal, your location, how long in business, sq footage, etc.

Derek: Memories Bridal & Evening Wear has been in business for since 2003. We started out as a little tiny consignment shop in Stevensville Michigan selling prom and pageant gowns. We quickly moved into bridal, shed our consignment roots and moved into a larger location in Downtown Stevensville. Soon thereafter we uprooted again and moved to a larger market in Downtown Kalamazoo, MI where we have been very happy since. Our building is about 5,000 sq feet of retail space and about 8,000 total including backrooms, storage, break rooms, etc. It is a 100 year old historic building that we own and have completely restored inside and out. It is a real jewel in a vibrant downtown.

Tom: What made you choose BridalLive over the other bridal-specific software vendors?

Derek: Prior to BridalLive we were using Quickbooks Point of Sale and although it handled the financial transactions well I saw so much missing with regards to all the work that gets done BEFORE the sale. I looked at several CRM products but couldn’t find anything to meet our needs…so I started designing my own system to be custom built. Low and behold after several months of mapping out exactly what it was we wanted in a Bridal Marketing, POS, and Sales Performance program, I stumbled across BridalLive. It was exactly what I had envisioned. I downloaded it and bought it on the spot. Since then It has surpassed all my expectations.

Tom: How long did it take to learn to use BridalLive? How long to train your staff?

Derek: Bridal Live is very intuitive and hardly takes any training at all. If you know how to use a mouse and keyboard you will be able to figure this out.

Tom: Has BridalLive improved your bridal shops operations? How?

Derek: Absolutely – mainly with regards to our bridal scheduling and follow-ups. We deal with a fairly high volume of traffic and BridalLive keeps us on task and helps us make each customer feel like that matters.

Tom: What is your favorite feature of BridalLive?

Derek: There are so many, the reports are excellent, but so are the tasks, you’ll never again forget to do something, just set yourself a task and it will stay in the list until you mark it as completed! Yay, a few less sleepless nights worrying about the thing I’m sure forgotten, but can’t actually remember what it is!

Tom: How much would you estimate it has/will save you per year?

Derek: I have no idea but if I knew then what I know now about BridalLive I would have paid several times the retail price of the product.

Tom: What is your favorite feature of BridalLive?

Derek: The scheduling features…especially the on-line integration. I also really like how it keeps everything together on one platform form prospecting prospective customers to sending the congratulatory note after their wedding.

Tom: Would you recommend BridalLive to other bridal shops? Why?

Derek: The software is modern, sophisticated yet intuitive. It’s built by a software engineer who also owns a bridal shop: doesn’t get much better than that. And if you have a good suggestion for improving the product, shoot Tom an email and you’ll probably see it implemented in the next (free) upgrade to the program.

I’d like to thank Derek for taking time out of his busy schedule to share his thoughts and insights with everyone. Memories is one of the leading Bridal Shops in Michigan has an excellent selection of Wedding Dresses, Prom Dresses, and Evening Wear.

Come and get it. BridalLive version 2.1, now available.

admin wrote this on Mar 6 |

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I'm happy to announce that the next version of BridalLive is available for you to download for free (as always)!  This version introduces some powerful and exciting features that you will want to take advantage of immediately. Let's have a look at a few highlights.

Mobile Phone Texting
You can now send and schedule text messages from BridalLive to your contact's mobile phones.  Just in time for prom season, this feature opens up a new marketing channel to a demographic that is increasingly mobile.  This feature is free for Internet Marketing Tools subscribers and also requires a Twilio.com account. You can watch a how-to video to learn more about this feature.

New Support Center
In an effort to make it even easier to obtain support and learn more about BridalLive, we are launching a new Support Center which is available at http://support.bridallive.com.  The support center has also been embedded right inside of BridalLive under Administration > Support Center.  When you need some help, just open the Support Center and search the vast knowledge base of topics (coming soon!).  Over the next few weeks, we will be filling out the Knowledge Base with articles on various BridalLive topics.  If you have a suggestion for an article, simply post a question on the new Support Center and I'll add it to the growing list of articles.

New Reports
There are 3 new reports that will help with buying inventory and customer pickups (Sales Summary by Size, Sales Summary by Color, and Pickup Report).

Discontinue Items
BridalLive now allows you to discontinue inventory items.  You will now be warned when adding a discontinued item to a Sale or Sales Order.  This feature is evolving as I receive feedback from you.  If you have any suggestions on how you'd like this feature to work going forward, please reply to this email and let me know!

Credit Card Processing Compliance
Mastercard recently announced support for partial approvals and BridalLive now supports this as well.  If you still don't have a merchant account that is linked with BridalLive, please reply to this email for a free cost analysis.

And over 25 more new enhancements and bug fixes…
For a complete listing of new features and improvements, check out the release notes.

Update Now!
If you are already running BridalLive, updating is simple and takes less than 1 minute per computer. On each computer running BridalLive, follow these 3 steps:

  1. Open the Administration Module
  2. Click "Program Settings"
  3. Click "Check For Updates" and click "Yes".

Important Note: When performing your updates please remember to update your "Master" computer first followed by each of your "Workstation" computers.

Helping you thrive,
Tom Esposito
Founder | tom@bridallive.com | 888-764-2605
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