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    THE ANTIQUE and CRAFT MALL
    BUSINESS e-JOURNAL

The Official e-Journal of Antiques SOS (tm) and Crafts SOS (tm)
Complete Mall Business Management Software

April 2000 Vol. 2 Issue #2

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This publication is intended to provide you, the owner or
manager of an antique mall, craft mall or design center
with timely, usable information. We sincerely hope that it
serves this purpose well. Please let us know what articles or
columns would be of interest to you. We welcome qualified
subscribers and will be pleased to provide The Antiques SOS(tm)
Antique and Craft Mall Business e-Journal to them at no charge.
Because the costs of printing and mailing a publication are so great,
regular delivery of the Business e-Journal will be by email only.
Please pass this issue on to a friend. Both they and we will
appreciate your consideration.

(C) Software Gallery, LLC    April 30, 2000

David P. Cunningham, Editor
email: editor@antiques-sos.com
http://www.antiques-sos.com
subscribe by sending an email to:
subscribe_ASOS@antiques-sos.com

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We value every subscriber and respect your privacy. If you
received this publication in error or wish to receive no further
issues, email remove_ASOS@antiques-sos.com. You will be
promptly removed from the list. NOTE: Our subscriber list is
strictly private and is not made available to others for any reason.

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IN THIS ISSUE.....

1. Building a Web Presence - Part 4 of 4
2. Marketing Tip -- Advertising
3. Sales Tip -- The Key to More Sales
4. Mall Operations Tip -- Making Your Mall Lawsuit Resistant -- Part 2 of 2
5. Dave's Soapbox -- The Critical Importance of Great Dealers
6. Internet Neighborhood
7. Nerd's Corner -- Graphics Images for the Web -- Part 2 of 2
8. A Little Light on Windows -- More on Fat Pipes

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TOPIC OF THE MONTH

Building a Web Presence - Part 4 of 4

The Web

Finally, the foundation is in place and we can talk about the web.
Of course, there are more questions and lots of decisions to make.
However, after having thoroughly examined the more fundamental
issues and built our foundation, we're now in a good position to
answer the web oriented questions we have.

Once, again we have a hierarchy of issues we have to consider.
At the top of the list, as always, is planning. Then we have design,
execution, and fulfillment. If your web site is intended to sell
merchandise or services, you have the added facets of resolving
payments, packing and shipping.

You need to consider whether your presence will include your
own hosted web site or whether you will rely upon a store front on
someone else's web site or will be selling through auction.

If you are going to have your own web site, as we do, you will
have to resolve the following issues:
• Someone will have to build it, populate it with information and
merchandise and, especially, maintain it.
• You will need to find a source for appropriate information content
and have it prepared for posting on your web site.
• If you are going to accept credit cards to pay for merchandise
you will, in all likelihood, need a shopping cart program.
• Who will host your site ? There are hundreds of web hosting
companies. However only a relative few have the skill and the
muscle to do an effective job. You don't want a hosting company
that is too small, has minimally effective technical help available,
has too few and too limited connections to the web backbone and
cannot provide the resistance to hackers required.. Or, on the
other hand, your web host shouldn't be too large. If you are a
microblip on their radar screen what kind of service can you expect ?
• Where will your site be hosted ? Is the site secure ? Are daily
backups available ? Is there an alternative power source ? Is
the host site very near a major connection to an internet backbone ?
• Who will build and maintain your extraordinarily valuable mailing
list ? As critical as this aspect is, it requires very careful consideration.
• Who are your prospective customers and what do they want to see ?
• How are you going to present the information and merchandise
they want ?
• How are you going to prepare the photographs required for your
site ?
• Do you know what to do to make your web site as attractive to
your prospective customers as possible ?
• Do you know what not to do to minimize the opportunity for
offending and irritating your prospective customers ?
• The web is a very cold, very impersonal space. Who is going to
do the critical aspect of preparing the copy writing for your web
page ? This is a very specialized and important skill which few
have mastered. Great copy writing will pay tremendous
dividends; poorly written copy can sink your web site.

Your choices are to build your own web site or contract for space
on someone else's. Either one requires work, and a lot of it, to
make it worth doing. But, there is a lot more work and considerable
expense involved in having your own site. Forget about slapping
up a dorky static "hey, I'm here" web page. The day, mercifully, of
having such sites succeed is long gone.

Can having a well conceived and executed internet presence be
worth the hassle ? Sure, it can if you do it right and keep it up.
What it takes is:

• Great planning
• The availability of good merchandise
• A solid comprehension of the internet and its ins and outs
• Excellent photographs
• A very high level of service
• Quality dealers and consignors
• Good equipment
• Technosavvy employees
• Loads of great information for your site
• Quality supporting software
• A fast computer with a very large hard drive and plenty of memory
• A good measure of serendipity

Is it possible to do well financially with an internet presence ?
Yes it is. But don't underestimate the planning, work, commitment,
financial investment, savvy (both business and technical) required
to succeed.

by
David P. Cunningham, P.E.

Copyright Notice: Copyright 2000 David P. Cunningham, P.E.
This article is available upon request by from our web site
http://www.antiques-sos.com by downloading a copy. Or,
we'll email a copy to you upon request.

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MARKETING TIP
(A brief tip for marketing your mall)

Advertising

Advertising can pay big dividends. As you well know, however,
advertising is very much a chicken and the egg situation. You
need revenue to advertise but advertising can generate revenue,
revenue hopefully well in excess of the cost of advertising.

Whether your advertising budget is directed toward print media,
brochures, TV, radio, fliers, etc really depends upon your business
model, business plan and your advertising plan. You also have to
consider whether your advertising should be directed toward so
called institutional advertising or toward specific merchandise,
dealers or events.

Institutional advertising is directed toward selling customers upon
the great idea of visiting your mall. Advertising specific
merchandise can result in the sale of that merchandise but it can
also result in bringing in new customers.

The best approach is to start with a reasonable advertising budget
and progressively increase it as revenues increase. It should be
very clear that your business model has a very significant impact
upon your advertising budget. A good approach to funding at
least part of the advertising costs you incur is to assess your
dealers on a regular basis. Make sure, however, that it is very
clear that they are deriving definite benefits from the assessments
they pay.

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SALES TIP
(A brief tip on selling more to customers --local
and remote and increasing revenue)

The Key to More Sales

So, just what is the key to more sales ? As is true of so many
things, there is no one answer to this question. It may be quite
instructive, however, to look at why sales do not occur. Then,
perhaps, we can draw some conclusions about what to do to
overcome the issues which inhibit or prevent sales.

The first four issues I have included are part of a list proposed
some time ago by master sales trainer Zig Ziglar. The last four I
added based upon my long term knowledge of the antiques
business. The issues are:
• No need
• No money
• No hurry
• No trust
• No knowledge
• No availability
• Non-competitive pricing
• Competing choices

Part 2 will follow in the May 2000 issue

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MALL OPERATIONS TIP
(A brief tip about improving antique
mall operations)

Making Your Mall Lawsuit Resistant

Part 2 of 2 continued from the previous issue

Dealers too, bear responsibility for helping to assure a safe,
lawsuit resistant environment in your mall.

• Heavy objects on shelves can be quite dangerous, especially if
they are unstable and can be pulled upon by unsuspecting
shoppers or children. Make sure that anything of this nature is
properly secured and stabilized.

• Extension cords and electrical boxes used in dealer spaces must
be UL listed, equipped with switches and breakers, and limited in
load to standards you set. Not only is this a significant safety
issue, but electrical loads can result in considerable expense.

• Halogen lamps and fixtures, with the possible exception of
properly installed and mounted track lights, should be
unconditionally banned from your mall. These are very
dangerous devices which can result in spontaneous ignition fires
or severe burns to a person.

• Trip hazards in dealer spaces are common. All carpets must be
secured and edges taped. All extension cords, if they are
permitted at all, must be routed away from traffic areas and
properly secured.

• No highly flammable liquids or materials should be present in
dealer spaces.

• Edged weapons must be secured in locked cases or placed
above the reach of children.

• Highly toxic materials, insecticides, chemicals or other materials
usually found in decorative boxes or containers are very
frequently not marked as hazardous should be prohibited.

• Firearms and firearm safety are a special case. In addition to
presenting a very difficult series of regulatory issues, firearms
can present special dangers and liabilities. If you decide to permit
firearms regulated under current national, state or local law to be
sold in your mall, you have a special obligation to protect yourself,
your dealers and the public. Consult YOUR ATTORNEY for
guidance. By permitting firearms to be sold you may be incurring
liabilities which may prove to be unacceptable to you.

All modern firearms and antique firearms using cartridges must be
checked for the presence of ammunition and verified as being
unloaded. All antique firearms, as defined by applicable
regulation, must be checked to verify the absence of powder
charges and balls in the barrel and the absence of a fireable cap
or powder in the pan. Charges and balls in barrels of muzzle
loading weapons are a frequently found hazard and can present
a very serious threat to shooters and by standers.

Once you have established your loss prevention program and
begun to carry it out, it is singularly important to follow up and
make sure that it is enforced. Make sure that your dealer contract
contains your rules and that they are enforced. Again, TALK TO
YOUR ATTORNEY. It is far cheaper now than later.

DO NOT allow sloppy dealer housekeeping !! By doing so YOU
are allowing them to put you into a very vulnerable and almost
indefensible legal position.

Let the experts help you with your loss prevention program. Talk
to your insurer ! They may be able to assist you with your loss
prevention issues. Also consider talking to your local fire
department. They also may be able to assist you. There is
usually plenty of good competent help available; the challenge is
finding and using it. Follow their advice regarding loss prevention.
But, more than anything else, use your common sense.

If you have the slightest hesitation about addressing these issues,
you need to consider the following question. Ask yourself how
you would respond to a persistent attorney's attack questioning,
a judge's clarifying questions and how your position would look to
a jury sympathetic to an injured plaintiff. Be particularly aware
that juries very sympathetic to injured children and can award
huge sums to them or their survivors. The publicity, especially if
you are deemed to be complicit, associated with a lawsuit can be
devastating to your business. The associated expense can be
financially devastating.

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DAVE'S SOAPBOX

The Critical Importance of Great Dealers

The successful implementation of all that we have talked about
in the previous issues of the Antiques SOS e-Journal rests upon
one thing. That one thing is having a cadre of excellent dealers
who are very active and who offer really good merchandise at
fair prices. Lets face it, if you do everything else 100% right but
fail to provide the merchandise that your customers want, you
have achieved nothing.

Of course you want to solicit, attract and retain dealers who will
complement the personality you have chosen for your antique mall.
And, you want dealers who have a proven record of success or
who have a strong promise of future success.

The dealers you attract and retain should have a loyal following
of financially capable customers. Your business plan and the
business model it is built upon should be designed to tap into the
expected enhanced revenue your mall will generate. And, you
should be willing to spend some of your earnings to reward your
best dealers and invest in advertising and promotion.

Great dealers are the heart of any active and thriving antique mall
business. Plan to work very diligently to acquire them, keep them
happy, help them in any way possible and go all out to retain them.

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THE STUFF THAT PAYS THE RENT

Antiques SOS (tm), Antiques SOS Lite (tm) and Antiques SOS
Basic (tm) are Software Galley, LLC software products which
serve the Antique Mall trade. Our products are installed in 250
antique malls in 39 states and Canada. Antiques SOS (tm) was
first installed in 1987 and Antiques SOS Lite (tm) was introduced
in 1998 to satisfy a need for computer software for smaller malls.
Antiques SOS Basic (tm) was introduced in 1999 and has been
very well received. All products are fully Year 2000/Y2K
compliant. Please refer to complete information which has been
posted on our Antiques SOS (tm) web site
-- http://www.antiques-sos.com

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INTERNET NEIGHBORHOOD

Cool web sites

http://www.rubylane.com

Is an online group of antique shops and malls. Ruby Lane is very
easy to navigate and graphically excellent with a very wide variety
of antiques and collectible categories. The merchandise
displayed on the site tends to be of very good quality and desirable.
Excellent photos.

http://www.sharperimage.com

Is the online version of the very well known catalog which tends to
specialize in all sorts of esoteric gadgetry. If the Sharper Image
doesn't have the gadget for you, it probably doesn't exist. A bit
garish but chock full of fascinating stuff. A real study in the great
art of copywriting.

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NERD'S CORNER
(A light approach for non-techies
concerning need to know issues)

Part 2 of 2 continued from the previous issue

Reduce the Number of Pixels

Always remember that the images you create are being viewed
on a monitor, not on photographic paper. Unlike photographic
paper, monitors are low resolution devices. Therefore, it is most
appropriate to produce your image to suit the medium upon which
it will be displayed, that is, a relatively low resolution monitor.

Your images should be measured in pixels to match the way the
monitor resolutions are measured. A good image size to shoot for
is between 80 and 150 pixels vertically and horizontally. When
images get this small fine detail can disappear so crop
photographs tightly and focus upon bold objects, bright lines and
solid backgrounds.

Although well beyond the scope of this article, there are numerous
tweaks and techniques which can be used to improve the
apparent download speed of graphic image files. Using images
more than once in a document is effective in increasing apparent
download speed because the image is cached and loads very
quickly from memory in subsequent pages.

Which Format ?

Almost all modern web browsers support both GIF and JPEG
graphic file formats as well as many others. If you are working
with an image that only has a limited number of colors, the GIF
format may be a good choice because you can limit the image
size by limiting the number of colors. On the other hand, if you
are working with an image which contains many colors, especially
with many forms subtle tonality, JPEG may be the format of choice.

Well beyond the scope of this article are professionally created
images which employ newer and more sophisticated graphics
formats but exceed the needs of most antique and craft malls.

Using the information we have presented, you should be able to
make the choices necessary to take the images you have
produced and suitably modify and prepare them for use on the web.

One of the fundamental truths concerning the internet is that
visitors to your site will not wait. Your web site must load very
quickly if you expect visitors to look at it. Why ? People are
impatient and want to get on with what they are doing. Most
people who visit the web still have slow analog modems and less
than optimal dial up connections to the web. To facilitate
downloading your web pages should be less than 50,000 bytes,
including the graphics. Keep the images on your pages small.
If you need to convey more information let the viewer bring up a
larger, more comprehensive image. They'll wait longer for
something they initiate and want to see.

Fancy, flashy, complicated web page graphics can be very
distracting and severely interfere with accomplishing the purpose
of your web pages. They greatly increase web page loading
times leading to visitor frustration. If you do use complex
graphics, make sure that they add substantially to your web
pages' purpose and functionality. Because many visitors explore
the web with their browser graphics function turned off, make
sure that your web site makes sense and is navigable without
your graphics visible.

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A LITTLE LIGHT ON WINDOWS

More on Fat Pipes

In the March issue of the Antiques SOS e-Journal we introduced
the concept of "fat pipes". Although the "fat pipes are very real,
access to them by us mere mortals is still rather difficult and limited.

Currently, if you want to move beyond the standard telephone
dialup services to which most of us are wedded, your choices are
limited. The available choices are essentially limited to one of two
options (a) digital subscriber line (DSL) or (b) cable modem.
Neither of these choices is usually available outside of an urban
or nearby suburban environment. Availability is currently quite
spotty as is service and support.

DSL connection

DSL or digital subscriber line service is an "always on" connection
to the internet. Although limited to a maximum of approximately
18,000 feet distance from the central office, DSL does offer an
attractive high speed connection, both downlink from and uplink
to the internet. Depending upon the way the DSL line is
configured, the downlink speed varies from approximately 144
to 7200 Kilobytes per second (kbps). The uplink speed varies
from approximately 90 to 1500 kbps.

DSL service has reached a market penetration of about 10% to
this point with a 14% penetration expected by 2003. As might be
expected, DSL is primarily the turf of incumbent wireline telephone
companies and their partners. Because DSL is "always on" there
are significant security issues which must be addressed.

Cable modem connection

Cable modem access is limited to areas where cable TV providers
have upgraded their systems to provide internet access. Cable
modems, like DSL connections, are "always on". And, their
availability is quite spotty.

Cable modems do offer an attractive connection speed.
Realistically, the downlink speed can be anticipated to be a
maximum of 800 - 1000 kbps. The uplink speed will be
approximately 128 kbps.

Most often, the choice of internet service providers (ISP) is limited
to the ISP chosen by the cable company. Because cable modems
are "always on", there are significant security issues which must
be addressed. Cable modem systems are sensitive to additional
traffic caused by the addition of new subscribers. Therefore,
additional subscribers in a given area can and will slow down
access speeds.

For the most part cable modem service is considered to be a
consumer service. Thus, any e-commerce activity will probably
be restricted. Cable modem current market penetration is
approximately 4% with 14% penetration anticipated by 2003. As
might be expected, the cable modem business is primarily the turf
of well established cable companies and the companies who own
them.

Part 2 will follow in the May 2000 issue

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Dave Cunningham is one of the principals of Software Gallery,
LLC the developer and owner of Antiques SOS (tm) and
Antiques SOS Lite (tm). He specializes in technical issues
which affect the Software Gallery client base. Dave's special
interests are: e-commerce and its appropriate use; privacy issues;
and time saving aspects of technology. He has accumulated an
assortment of wallpaper from a number of fine institutions of higher
learning as well as The University of Life. The foregoing qualifies
him to issue profound mutterings, occasionally stumble into
solutions to user problems and, when necessary, cook dinner.

Sue Cunningham is also one of the principals of Software
Gallery, LLC. She's been writing computer software
professionally since 1964 and has been an antiques dealer since
1967. She's a self proclaimed "nerd" who even had "FOXPRO"
on her Pennsylvania license plate.

Software Gallery, LLC is a business venture of The
Cunninghams. Long active in the antiques world as dealers and
in software development, Sue and Dave Cunningham live and
work in Laramie, Wyoming after having been located in
Denver, Pennsylvania for many years.

The Antiques SOS (tm) product line has its own web site at
http://www.antiques-sos.com. More information about
Software Gallery, LLC and its products can be found at
http://www.softwaregallery.com.

To subscribe to The Antiques SOS eJournal email to:
subscribe_ASOS@antiques-sos.com

To unsubscribe email to: remove_ASOS@antiques-sos.com

_________________________________________

(C) 2000 Software Gallery, LLC

We encourage you to forward a copy of this issue (w/ all
copyright notices intact) to as many antique, craft or design
mall owners or managers as you wish. This information may
not be altered, transmitted or transferred; electronically or
otherwise for any other purpose without written permission
from Software Gallery, LLC. All rights reserved.

_________________________________________

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