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Showing posts from 2018

Inventory Management Module relaunched.

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We have revisited the inventory management solution. Managing inventory seams to be a bit of a struggle for many shops and making this content available online also has its issues. Current partners : Contact us for a tutorial.  With the spark Lead management system we take the sting out of managing the public facing inventory management. We then can customize the presentation layer for various needs. if you would like to manage remnant inventory we can build the display for that. if you would like to list in stock slabs and manage the quantities it can do that. With some basic setup details we can have you up and running in no time and provide your staff with the ability to manage and track the inventory. This application is responsive to all internet enable devices. administration:  Front end User Interface: Demo https://www.granitemakeover.com/apps/inventory/?mkt=Concord&format=yes&pbg=lightgrey&bg=white&txt=black If you wou

Actionable opportunities for the spark lead manager

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New Actionable opportunities for the spark lead manager For those of you that are avid users of the spark system. we have added a new feature that puts some logic around the various statuses that you can set for your leads. the system alerts you of potential opportunities to move the customers through the buying process and keeps you on top of customers that could fall through the cracks. This is only suggested activity and is not required but could add value and increase sales when following these suggestions. The spark system is a lead management system more than a CRM. Sometimes these terms are intermingled. this tool is primarily designed to capture lead details and report on marketing activities. We have added feature to the lead manager to help sales people move the lead through a process defined by your team. The main theory behind these opportunities is   - that a lead in the NEW status older than 2 days could be a lost opportunity.   - that a lead in the ACTIVE

Cambria and Chinese Quartz imports

Recently,   Stone World   published a report about the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative releasing a list of approximately $200 billion worth of Chinese imports that will be subject to additional tariffs, including quartz and a range of natural stone products.  Effective September 24, 2018, the additional tariffs were set at 10% and starting January 1, 2019 they will increase to 25%. Cambria has come out with a press release titled, “Duties on imported quartz surface products may apply to shipments from as early as June 2018.” The release states: “Today, Cambria filed critical circumstances allegations with the Department of Commerce (“Commerce”) and the International Trade Commission (“ITC”) to stop the surge of Chinese quartz surface products imports into the United States following Cambria’s April 2018 filing of antidumping (“AD”) and countervailing (“CVD”) duty petitions.”  Imports of quartz surface products from China increased by 81% after Cambria filed its petitions

Summer Seasonal changes, the retail customer, sales planning

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Every year at the same times the retail customer activity is the same.  During the transition into summer and memorial day weekend expect customers to be more "tire kicking" They are still interested in doing the countertops but they are distracted by other seasonal expenses.  Some examples of these distractions: Outdoor clean up, gardening and planting Travel plans to friends and relatives Opening the pool Opening camps and cottages Prepping the boat for the summer season School transitions  Graduations etc. These activities distract from the focus of the kitchen remodel, planning activities and can take the consumers attention and expendable income away from the kitchen remodel.  During these times of slow down before and after we typically see things picking up.  You have a couple choice based on your own planning: Increase your exposure to maintain sales flow Stay where you are to ride things out through the ups and downs Increase the pe

Unplanned outage - Update: 4/9/2018

Due to a network related issue with the hosting servers we were affected for a period of 2 hours Monday afternoon. After 1 hour all campaigns are paused and then resumed within 30 minutes of the network issue being addressed. We were in communication with the hosting facility and were able to keep downtime to a minimum. This outage affected routing of website traffic as well as email traffic as computers were not able to route to our DNS servers which essential relay traffic to the appropriate website or email server. This issue was up stream from our servers so we had to wait for them to resolve the issue. Network interruptions are not common but can happen on occasion. For the last 5 years we have seen less than 48 hours of down time. FireUps® is the granite and natural stone installers source for instant exposure to local and national markets with strategically Targeted Online Marketing Campaigns and proven Web exposure. FireUps provides local online marketing services for t