​By Eliana Barriga
Publisher and Managing Editor for The Retail Observer

​I recently welcomed another grandchild into the world. I’m still amazed at the circle of life. From the time a mother conceives, through pregnancy, birth and infancy. This is such a precious and fragile time. Once the child can walk and talk we let our guard down just a bit, give them more space to grow, don’t worry as much. Then they become teenagers and we release the reigns a little more. Until they are adults and move out on their own, start their own lives.

​Of course, we always care about them, touch base with them, spend time with them. But it is nothing like those first few years of their life where our worlds seemingly revolve around theirs. When every decision we make can have a major impact on their very survival.

How many of us view our business like “our baby”. We coddle and nurture it at the very beginning and then as the business grows, we loosen our watch over every detail. Some of us take our hands off the steering wheel completely. We stop checking in on its vitals, we stop having those weekly sales meetings, we stop reviewing our quarterly reports, we don’t keep up with new product launches, industry trends, training and we may even start spending less time at the office. Sure, everything is seemingly running just fine on “auto-pilot” for now. Until months and years of neglect catch up to you and you find your business in crisis.

A business needs your management and attention no matter what stage of life it’s in or how old it is. Just like we wouldn’t turn a blind eye to the welfare of our children, we shouldn’t turn a blind eye to the health of our business.

In this issue, Elly Valas shares tips on managing your business financials in her article, Keep Your Eye on the Ball, a must read!

Until next time,
Eliana Barriga
eliana@retailobserver.com

​By Moe Lastfogel
Director of Sales and Marketing for The Retail Observer

A few years ago, The Retail Observer launched a completely redesigned website. Between 18-20 thousand of you visit the site monthly to get the latest news and Twitter feeds from all of the industries we cover. On our home page, you will find current features and partner spotlights from our monthly issue, which is mailed out to more than 15,000 hard-copy subscribers and 6,500 email subscribers in 36 countries. You will also find links to other pages on the site like our writers’ corner, blogs, archives, subscription requests and more.

We just launched a new feature for your reading pleasure, the “Daily News”. We scour hundreds of news feeds daily to bring you the latest news from our industry partners, new trends, product offerings and educational opportunities. You’ll find this on our home page and in our news section. We also have live Twitter feeds and Facebook postings on the home page for easy access.

Our events page features our current monthly calendar as seen in the magazine, but now has an extended Year-at-a-Glance calendar to help you plan further ahead. Also, don’t forget to visit these pages: our Partners page includes an industry directory that links to the sites of manufacturers, distributors, buying groups and trade associations; and our Heart of the Industry page is where we proudly support our favorite charities and our partners’ charities with in-kind advertising.

Take a look to see what’s new at www.retailobserver.com and if you would like us to add any information we may have overlooked, let us know at letters@retailobserver.com.

Happy Retailing,
Moe Lastfogel
moe@retailobserver.com