Small Business News

Selling baking supplies might not seem like a completely unique business idea to many U.S. consumers. But in parts of the world, those supplies can be more difficult to come by. A U.S. expat learned this lesson the hard way when she moved to Germany years ago. But she took the opportunity to turn the problem into a business, now known as Keyk. Read about the company and what sets it apart in this week’s Small Business Spotlight.

Provides supplies and resources for bakers.

Founder Sepi Gazeri told Small Business Trends, “Based out of Germany, Keyk offers over 800 baking products including cake pans, food coloring, cookie cutters, fondant and aprons. The portfolio includes leading industry brands including Wilton, S

You run a shop on Shopify and you’re wanting to give your sales a boost. It could be time to start taking advantage of Shopify apps. Though with so many apps available, how do you know which ones will be right for your ecommerce store?

Fortunately, help is at hand, as below are the best 15 Shopify apps to help you manage and grow your Shopify business.

With MailChimp for Shopify, you can add customers and their purchase details automatically. You can create powerful automations, targeted emails and ad campaigns to help you grow your ecommerce business and sell more products. What’s more, MailChimp for Shopify is a free application, connecting your Shopify store to your MailChimp account.

Spin-a-Sale is a unique email pop-up which is interactive and enticing for visitors. The Spin-a-Sale app displays a special prize wheel for visitors, which you can configure. When visitors enter their email address, the prize wheel spins and they can win a random discount. You can customize the app to specific discounts and offers. Spin-a-Sa

“Dilly Dilly” — Bud Light’s new catchphrase — has taken the world by storm.

Bud Light’s vice president of marketing Andy Goeler talked to The Washington Post about the slogan in an article published Thursday.

Goeler told WaPo that the slogan Dilly Dilly means, “a cheers, a Bud Light cheers.”

He also explained how the ad campaign started, saying, “With a brand the size of Bud Light, there’s a continuing need to put out creative ad content, so we on a regular basis are reviewing creative ideas. It was about June, and we were having one of those creative sessions with our creative agency, Wieden+Kennedy, and they were reading scripts talking about different ideas.”

“This ‘Dilly Dilly’ script came up, and they read it, and it was one of the scripts that kind of instantly had everybody excited,” he added.

Goeler also said that the level of public excitement about the campaign was absolutely huge.

“You wouldn’t believe the emails

Customers and 60,000 “taskers” — many of whom work as freelancers —  were in for a rude awakening Monday April 16 when TaskRabbit announced its site had been taken down following “a cybersecurity incident.” After alarm bells were sounded by several TaskRabbit users, a tweet by the company confirmed the situation.

As of this writing, the site remains inaccessible accept for a landing page briefly explaining the situation. On the page, TaskRabbit says the matter is being investigated and in the meantime the app and the website are offline. A short FAQ on the page has some basic information as to what users and taskers should do in the meantime. One of the warnings from the company is to change your password right away. You can take a look at the full FAQ below.

In the tweet, TaskRabbit said it is working with law enforcement and an outside cybersecurity firm to find out what happened. Details of the incident haven’t been revealed, but with hundreds of thousands of customers and 60,000 taskers, the potential of a large scale personal and financial data breach does exist.

We’re investigating a cybersecuri

When the deadline for the “liability shift” was almost up in October 1, 2015, the number of small businesses having switched to EMV was at 8.33 percent. According to Visa, 59% of U.S. POS locations now accept the chip, a 578 percent growth since 2015.

The new numbers were released at the recent 11th annual Secure Technology Alliance Payments Summit held together with the U.S. Payments Forum All-Member Meeting, and the International Card Manufacturers Association (ICMA) EXPO in Orlando, Fl. The summit is held to discuss issues affecting the payment market now and in the future, along with policies and technologies impacting the segment.

The implementation of EMV by small businesses has decreased the number of card fraud attempts at the point of sale, experts say. This was one of the reasons the Buy Secure Initiative, backed by the previous administration, was launched nationwide.

One of the keynote speakers at the summit, Stephanie Ericksen of Visa, revealed some data from the company regarding EMV adoption and security. In a press release, Ericksen explained how 96 perc