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Take Your Home to the Next Level – Find Your Furniture Style

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With so many options in home furniture, it can be hard to make the right choice. We all see pictures of fabulous rooms full of lavish furniture, but we don’t all have the time or money to invest in extravagant looks. The good news is that there are easy and affordable furniture options available. With so many options, you are sure to find furniture that will transform your home into a show place.

There are several ways to create a new look for your home. Whether you are looking for classic and simple, or you prefer a more dramatic look, local furniture stores offer a wide array of styles and pieces that are sure to please. Not ready to throw out everything and start new, but still want a new look? Try adding signature pieces to existing rooms, the right furniture can make everything old seem new again.

Classic with a Twist
Like the timeless look of clean lines and conventional fabrics? There are many furniture options that will allow you to style your home in a classic motif, while adding a modern twist. You can find new colors and patterns that add an interesting spin to traditional textiles. Try adding a few unexpected pieces to move your classic look into a stylish statement.

The Newer the Better
Modern furniture provides excitement and interest, as well as function. The new trends in modern home furnishings include pieces that are a mixture of fashion and function. You can find storage spaces in surprising places, now even sofas and chair are serving double duty. The sleek contemporary look of modern furniture can give your home a fresh and exciting look. If you are adding just a few furniture pieces to your existing look, be sure to choose furniture that will compliment and update your existing style.

Drama, Drama, Drama
Looking for the wow factor? You can find a variety of creative ways to drama to your home. Try a basic look of black and white using furniture and fabrics, then add unexpected bursts of red, violet or brilliant blue, this creates a high degree of visual interest while still nodding towards a classic style. Need something even more daring? Look for ornately designed wood pieces, and furniture with rich fabrics in deep colors. Try adding touches of velvet and metallic to really create that over the top look.

Everyone has their own personal style and the great thing is that there are furniture options that can help you create a home that is camera ready. At the end of the day the most important thing is that you love the look you create, and that it is a true reflection of your personal style. The furniture and fabrics should make you feel at home.

Wheeled Carry on Luggage Makes Travel Plans Easier

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Wheeled carry on luggage has become popular as a means of simplifying travel in this modern age where DIY (do-it-yourself) projects abound. Almost everyone looks for the easy way out, at a cheaper price. Being able to streamline airline travel, carry your own bags from your car or taxi directly to the airline gate, and then off again, bypassing baggage claim, heralds a new phase for the frequent traveler.

The idea of hanging on to your luggage looks dim when you have to handle several pieces of heavy luggage and you do not have anyone help traveling with you. You can avoid this drudgery by packing your personal items in wheeled carry-on luggage.

You can find luggage with wheels at the same stores you buy your other travel accessories. You can also surf the Internet for online sellers. You will also find most of the major brands at inexpensive prices from discount retailers. Also, look out for sellers who have sales.

This handy luggage is available in all shades, colors, and all materials, both soft and hard. When you are considering buying new luggage, check first with your airlines to find out the correct allowable measurements for carry-on bags. It is possible to find sets that you like with many different featured pieces which will provide carrying capacity for all the items you wish to take with you on a business trip or a short trip to your in-laws.

Wheeled carry-on luggage is ideal for all types of travel, but business travelers can benefit most. This is because business travel revolves around short and streamlined trips. The businessperson only needs practical luggage. The idea of a carry-on bag that can hold all your needs and can travel inside the cabin with you, enables you to make good use of your travel time. Carrying luggage is incidental to the trip. It is also ideal for the family traveling in a group. Young children will enjoy pulling their own cases just like the big folks, and that will encourage responsible travel habits early for those kids.

Wheeled carry-on luggage comes in many different convenient sizes and types, from traditional looking suitcases to wheeled backpacks and other nontraditional cases. Manufacturers make these easy-to-transport suitcases and travel bags intending to make your travel easier. They simplify packing and carrying your clothing and equipment for whatever adventure you are embarking on, with whatever group you are traveling with.

A Look at Direct Mail and Online Marketing for Small Business Marketing

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Marketing and advertising plays a vital role in every small businesses. The fact is its important for the business owner to understand the need of his clients and formulate a strategy which will support those people needs. Marketing and advertising for any small business establishes the desire of the owners to grow and broaden their products or services. The use of junk mail and the web provides great opportunities to see organic growth of a small business. The following article looks at direct mail and online marketing for small businesses to reach a wide audience in cost effective and efficient ways.

Letterbox Mail

Letterbox deliveries is one of the best performing mediums of marketing for small business. It is competent at reaching an a number of buyers for only a few cents per letterbox. Radio, paper and television may perhaps be a pricey and hard to organize ways of advertisements for small business owners. To ensure that your advertising and marketing really creates increased traffic and plenty of attainable gross sales, you can look for firms that supply letterbox delivery within given areas. Specify your audience and organize letterbox circulation within each of those communities. Many businesses are offering cost efficient publications, circulation and design packages to cover anything from thousands to millions of catalogue delivery. For substantial circulations, it just takes a small number of responses to make the mail promotion profitable and get a return on investment.

Digital Marketing

When marketing for your small companies, typically the most popular method at the moment is through the net. Most small and large business entrepreneurs employ online advertising and here they try and give a discount for their consumers. This is a practical, easy approach to target the buyers needs regardless if see them in person or not. To get easily connected, you have to come up with an detailed site where people can look for your goods and services offered and your contacts and summary profile about your business. Your website should be used as your major point of contact on the net for your business. Internet promotion for the business is an effective and convenient solution to invite and interact with prospects. If you are a small business owners, you will want to think of effective methods or approaches to interact with prospects on-line. There can be various firms that can offer to get you more prospects through growing your online attractiveness.

Combine Direct Mail and Web Marketing

Another great approach in promotion for an enterprise is to set up a well-round strategy that combines print and website marketing. Taking this process allows you to cover just about all basis of where you are very likely to get in touch with your prospects. While a large number of people are on the net, there is still a great number who check out their mail. Combining mail and website marketing allows you greater opportunities to connect with individuals who may not find your enterprise within only one medium.

Work with other community merchants to co-promote your businesses with direct mail. This minimizes the expense of performing a letterbox campaign while still getting yourself a huge exposure in a great number of houses.

Afterwards, apply website marketing including social websites, search engines and internet mail to contact those same audiences using a regionally targeted method. If you co promoted with other businesses using mail, you can work together online also. Ask your partnering enterprises to promote your small business on their web updates, email address catalogues or back link off their site to your site while you do the equivalent for them. This further allows you to get through to prospects you may not generally have accessibility to exclusively.

Combined direct mail and internet for marketing a small venture involves creativity and partnerships to make your promotion go very much further in access as well expenses.

Use the combination of mail and the internet for great effect to grow your business and give it better exposure.

The Economics of Online Education

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As more and more universities are opening up to the idea of online proposition, it becomes important to raise the question: “Can online-education be a profitable and sustainable business?” To answer this question, let us explore the various important facets of this model which would decide the feasibility and financial sustenance of the e-idea. Some key parameters to be considered are the demand, ability to supply, technology and delivery process.

The demand for the service is abundant as previously discussed and so is the availability of market players who could cater to this growing demand. Hence, the viability of the proposition rests solely on the issues of effectively delivering the services and choosing or rather designing an appropriate business model. It is critical to analyze the following factors to assess the economics of the idea:

-Virtual university vs. traditional university (in transformation)
-Selling commodity vs. selling experience
-Technology: availability and costs
-Process of delivering quality and differentiation
-Cost analysis: Initial vs. marginal

Virtual University vs. Traditional University
There could be two different versions of an online education: a virtual online model and an existing university expanding its traditional model to accommodate the online proposition. Both models have different economics. A virtual model starts from scratch and has no prior experience with a traditional education model; it prepares curricula either by itself or in conjunction with an existing educational institution; it also has low infrastructure expenses but simultaneously no branding support.

It is relatively easy to start this business, but what matters are the quality of content and the process of delivery. For standard modules or programs, this seems to be a good venture as the content would not be difficult or expensive to produce or distribute. However, care needs to be taken to ensure the target segment for the program is carefully identified, as this model is not only competing with traditional models but also with online propositions of existing reputed educational institutions.

On the other side are the existing schools that would be extending their services to e-learning. These do face a challenge of adopting a business model which may not be compatible with their existing proposition. There is a risk of cannibalizing their existing successful business model. Both models, if to be continued simultaneously, need to be targeting reasonably different markets.

This model has an edge over a new virtual setup in terms of already available content and existing and successful brand; thus the institution could charge a premium. The model does not require huge costs as the content is available, and only needs to be digitized; it is also relatively easier to generate demand for the proposition, riding on the back of the existing traditional model. However, the institution still needs to work towards differentiating the model, not by the content but by the process of delivery.

Selling Commodity vs. Selling Experience
The institution may well decide to sell 10,000 degrees a year or may like a number that is much lower (i.e. < 200). The question is whether the institution is attempting to focus on the quality of the students and education or is merely happy with building the numbers and playing on cost. Online education does provide an opportunity to reach the masses with very low marginal costs but simultaneously could affect its reputation.

Though it is extremely hard to replicate the experience and environment of a traditional model, an attempt to get the program experience as close to the traditional experience would be considered a good differentiating factor. This experience would not stem from the content of the program as it is easily replicable, but from the content delivery process reaching the end user. Again, the type of module and the class of customer segment would decide upon the extent of the “experience” required to be instilled in the program.

Technology: Availability and Costs
The complete business idea of online education is dependent on technology. The base of this technology is the internet which is the fastest growing tool in terms of number of users. According to Lance Secretan, “It took 37 years for TV to reach 50 million homes and it took the web 4 years to do the same.” Though the base technology (the internet) does not seem to be a constraint, the bandwidth available to support the online education is questionable. Technology such as streaming audio and video requires huge bandwidth which may not be a constraint for institutions but for end users.

In most countries, the internet is at a nascent stage. More importantly the bandwidth to support “virtual reality” is not available. Even in developed countries it would be very expensive to have synchronous and interactive video lectures or sessions.

Though the pace of technological advancements is increasingly fast, and thus the bandwidth problem would soon be resolved, it may still be expensive to have a model that provides a similar learning experience to a traditional model. Therefore, the educational institutions would need to strike a balance between the “experience” and the cost depending on their target market segment(s).

Delivering Quality and Differentiation
In order to differentiate itself from others, it would be essential for an institution to focus on the process of delivering value to the end users. Educational institutions, keeping in mind their target market(s) and the available technology, would have to decide on the extent to which they should replicate or rather extend the strengths and benefits of their existing traditional model, if any, to the online proposition.

Aspects such as how to hold online lectures or how to transfer digitalized case material or even how to structure the program to make it more effective, would need to be evaluated.
If the proposition is to sell the program as a commodity, it would be better to conduct it in an asynchronous fashion, focus on delivering standard requirements, and cut down costs rather than add a new “experience” to it. This excludes premium programs with higher fees. These ones would be targeting people who are willing to pay for the technology needed to get a real experience of learning.

Cost Analysis: Initial vs. Marginal
The costs associated with an online proposition are low when compared to the ones of a traditional model which requires much greater infrastructure. The profits would depend upon the economic rent that could be derived from the services offered. This economic rent could only be sustained in the long run if the institution has sufficiently differentiated itself from its competitors.

The online model also has very low marginal costs compared to the initial set-up expenses. Unlike a traditional model which is limited by the size of its buildings (physical infrastructure) or the number of its faculty members, the capacity of an online model can be stretched to a great extent. This would help reduce marginal costs until a further increase in users requires significant investments in technology upgrades.

From the above arguments, there is no doubt that a sustainable online education model is definitely achievable. However, care has to be taken when defining the model that is in appropriate accordance with the targeted customer and service provision. Established universities, no doubt, have an edge over the new virtual universities but at the same time they carry the risk of endangering their established and successful traditional model.

The economics would also significantly vary depending upon the differentiation strategy, if at all, is pursued by the players. Selling a commodity would require a different strategy and would have different implications compared to the proposition when selling “experience”. The availability and costs associated with the technology would vary depending upon the geographical location of the institution and the students.