If there is an economic slowdown in demand for handcrafted, high-end, one-of-a-kind watches, then the Gloom Grinch forgot to check with D’Atlantis. Named after the lost continent ruled by God of the Sea, Poseidon, D’Atlantis designs limited edition timepieces – intricate yet durable precision watches, handmade by Swiss craftsmen, customized by jewels, precious metals and changeable bezels.      You won’t see that handcrafted, Atlantis-themed watch design among a street vendor’s wares; not unless that street runs upscale to Tesorini at Bellagio or The Watch Boutique at The Mirage in Las Vegas.  

A wholesaler of women’s handbags, one looking to enter the international marketplace, might want to know who imports the largest volume of U.S. handbags. (Japan, followed closely by South Korea) Such an exporter might also want to see breakdowns by materials (beaded, patent leather, leather).A distributor of leather clothing looking to expand export revenues might be very interested to know where the biggest appetite for imported U.S. leather apparel was in 2007. (Belgium. Surprised?)

SEO gurus know how to pull buyers and sellers to your merchandise web site: Sprinkle the right key words on pages and in the site’s Meta Data (behind-the-screen) codes. Keep those keyword-to-web-page-content ratios high, helping blind search spiders find you, so they can boost where you rank on results pages. Focus on useful, updated content: SEO sensei say nothing draws desirable customer eyeballs and search spider bots like practical content that refreshes often.It’s tempting in this world of search engine optimization to talk about talking mostly to the spider. But beware: Ignoring hominids (buyers seeking products) for software arachnids (search engine spider bots) could give you a language penalty. It might land your web site in Supplement Jail for infractions like “keyword stuffing” and other attempts at gaming the search spider. (Cell block “Supplement” is where the big general search engines send your site to be indexed on a schedule of Seldom or Never. No one comes to visit, not even the spiders.)

How does a wholesale seller reach buyers who work on Alpha Centauri time? (According to Tommy Lee Jones in the film Men In Black, that’s a 39-hour day!) How do you reach a younger audience with marketing messages if your targets do not read newspapers or magazines? One solution is to give them an “earful” straight from a web site. A Telephone, A Computer and 3.2 Million Thou’s
A start-up launched by a telecommunications entrepreneur has offered free service to amateur online “broadcasters” for two years. BlogTalkRadio estimates over 3,000,000 people listen in to live Internet radio talk shows enabled by their service, which requires only a phone line and computer.  

According to Customer Relationship Management Daily, ad-serving Internet firms – from Yahoo! and America Online to Cable One and Charter Communications – may be backpedaling on tracking user behaviors online in order to serve more customized ads. Or, they may simply be saying so in the face of a Congressional subcommittee investigating concerns about online user privacy. Behavioral Ad Targeting tracks and stores information (through cookies and web tracers) to build a profile of a web surfer’s preferences: sites visited, topic areas clicked or searched on, online community memberships, online purchases, etc.  

Take one wholesale industry leader with a track record supplying thousands of household and personal Dollar Store items – Kole Imports based in Carson, CA. Add growing demand for discount store merchandise, driven by an economy of Smart Shoppers searching for needed (but low-priced) back-to-school supplies, party goods, housewares and personal care items. Now, add some seasoned supply chain mojo and in-store display innovations.   Welcome to the better edges of dollar and discount store product sourcing from owners Rob and Danny Kole. Check out these profit boosters from Kole Imports: Unique Promo Pallets and Focus on Competitive Closeouts. 

Las Vegas is more than gaming. It’s an epicenter of Fashion, Clothing, Apparel and Specialty Trade Shows. Especially in August.Here’s a quick rundown on upcoming wholesale trade shows. TopTenWholesale (and its affiliates WholesaleU, Off-PriceNetwork, Wholezilla) is an exhibitor or media partner or trade partner in all these shows.

A group of ex-Google employees did the unthinkable last week: They started up a new and different search engine called Cuil (pronounced “cool” and adopted from a name in Celtic folklore).Yes, some industry analysts shake their heads and say this small start-up David (Cuil) will not cause Goliath (Google) to lose any sleep. They’ve seen this before.Still, here you are reading the Newsroom of a network of vertical search engines, all focused on wholesale and reseller industry needs. Top Ten Wholesale (and its affiliates WholesaleU, Off-Price Net, Wholezilla) never started up just to challenge Google. This network of JP Communications web sites and search engines actually launched to meet the verticalized needs of wholesalers … which were un-served market opportunities in the general world of search. Might not new kid Cuil be doing something similar in meeting search needs not filled by the biggest engines on the block?