Particles is taking the week off to celebrate the 4th of July holiday and spend some time with our families. 

We'll see you right back here next week with all-new content. 

The flowers are in full bloom and we're spending some time stopping to enjoy and appreciate.

Particles will return next week with all-new content. 

​Happy Spring!

Particles is going on a little vacation in celebration of the winter holidays. 

We wish you a wonderfully peaceful holiday season, and hope that you'll join us when we return with a brand new post on January 4th, 2018!

As we celebrate a day of Thanksgiving surrounded by family and friends, Cennos would like to take a moment to say thank you. We're grateful for a wonderful group of co-workers and clients, for the many blessings in our lives, and for continued success. 

Wherever you are today, we wish you a very happy and healthy Thanksgiving celebration. 

​Particles returns next week with a great post exploring Facebook marketing. 

It’s almost that time for you to throw the party of the year: your Halloween party. Don’t be alarmed; it’s relatively easy to throw a party that encourages your best friends to dress up, and forget that they weren’t eating sweets this month.

The most important aspect of any Halloween party is, of course, the costumes. To prevent the the awkwardness of only having half your guests dress up, you should consider letting your friends know ahead of time that you’ll be handing out silly awards during the night. Giving out awards for Best Costume and Worst Costume, etc. is a great to way to make your party memorable. It’ll also encourage friends to go the extra mile with their costumes, just as you’re going the extra mile to distinguish your party. 

In the age of endless YouTube cooking videos, there are many options for making Halloween treats for your party. You can find instructional videos for crafting anything from peculiar desserts that resemble ghosts and pumpkins, to simpler things like candy-topped brownies and cupcakes. Whatever you choose, just make sure you have plenty of treats, because after all, that’s what Halloween is all about. It wouldn’t hurt to put out small bowls of individually wrapped candies to encourage your guests to snack throughout the night.

As far as other essentials go, make sure you put a decent amount of time into decorating your space. No Halloween party is complete without plenty of pumpkins, so take the time to decorate and carve a few beforehand. If you aren’t great at carving pumpkins, encourage some of your friends to bring their own. You’d be surprised at how excited grown men and women get to carve a pumpkin this time of year.

It’s super fun and easy to get creative with common household items and recyclables to create decorations for your party. Of course, the Halloween staples include bats, webs, witches’ hats, ghosts, and skeletons, but don’t stop there. This is the time of year to fully express yourself in your truest form. Also, make sure your Halloween soundtrack ready to go, and don’t forget to play Monster Mash at least 3 times during the night—we're pretty sure there's a rule about that somewhere.

Lastly, if you’re daring enough to host a Halloween party, you’ll eventually have to take on the terrifying task of cleaning up once everyone leaves. Candy and sweets mixed with dancing and possibly a few adult-beverages can result in quite the mess. Prepare yourself for just that, and make sure that anyone you’re kind enough to crash on your sofa or in your guest room recognizes that they’ll be expected to join you in cleaning up when they wake up.

Most of all, have fun. That's really what Halloween should be about. 

At the intersection of merchandising and technology sits an acronym for the ages. “RFID,” or Radio Frequency Identification. It’s the culmination of 20th century panic frenzy among citizens terrified of Big Brother and micro-chipping. It’s an intrusive, anti-individualistic form of cataloging. But in the business world, it’s something different: a life-saver.

RFID’s early commercial applications centered around the supply chain, in a B2B mode. Checking in stock, tracking its movement between warehouses, and processing returned merchandise — these were all improved immeasurably by the chip technology.

Think of RFID as a wireless data capture accomplished through tags known as transponders. Eliminating the need for bulky equipment to “read” this data, the software associated with RFID handles that bulk communication.

But now the RFID picture has expanded, and there are great benefits in store for ecommerce figures. Macy’s discovered those as it evolved from a straight brick-and-mortar biz to an enviable online retailer. RFID tracking was so successful there, it resulted in a 200 percent surge in their fashion sales. Not too shabby.
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Sweetening the pot is a predictable drop in costs associated with RFID chips. Over the last 13 years, its prices have sunk 90 percent. With this incentive, the question becomes obvious: why not automate?

Using inventory management as a business tool can actually save your business.
 
It’s a concept as old as time: you can’t sell what you don’t have. That’s a lesson many ecommerce vendors are learning the hard way.

Overselling your products without tracking your ability to fill orders can quickly sour customers on current and future visits. No one wants to see “out of stock” after they’ve made an initial selection. And no, it doesn’t entice with the knowledge that they’ve chosen a popular item. They will go elsewhere.
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For merchants navigating the ecommerce jungle, challenges are plenty. Conquering inventory issues can help assure a seamless experience for customers while keeping you apprised of what is a big seller and what is a shelf-hanger.

Has sending the kids back to class dampened your summer joy? Cheer up. The school calendar doesn’t jive with the seasonal calendar, and there are still a few weeks left to soak up the sun in a fashionable outdoor setting.

Even early fall offers an impressive number of warm days that beckon to the back yard for some outdoor cooking and entertaining. And here’s where it gets fun: there’s a whole lot of options for outfitting your digs.
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If you thought grill design was a fixed entity, get a load of this amazing find. The Big Green Egg turns barbecuing on its head, so to speak, by refashioning an old classic. Science and culinary experience led its architects to emulate a traditional cooking process and update it with technology that ensures a quality result. 

Searching for an ecommerce payment gateway that isn’t PayPal?

You’re not the only one. There are a good many alternatives, though maybe none as well-known from a consumer standpoint.

​When it comes to managing your payments and financials, there are a lot of things to consider, and every case is a little different, so it’s worthwhile to do your research when someone else is counting your pennies. 

It seems to be a thing with your online store as it is with many other commercial undertakings, and that is the idea that consolidation is key.

You’re fully aware and engaged in using every available tool to grow your business, and have signed up for every conceivable social media platform. You’ve even spent time developing business profiles there in hopes of attracting a following.

But here’s what you’re missing: You may be spending too much time on that. That’s why you should consider integrated digital marketing.

Among recent developments designed specifically for ecommerce merchants are apps and programs that tackle social media outreach and maintenance in one shot. This means an elimination of several daily log-ins to gauge interest, update elements, and track trends among competitors.
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Such a tool will spare needless wasted hours while accomplishing everything you’d otherwise be laboring over yourself. As it turns out, the “social” part of social media can be time-consuming to a fault.