Australian Newsagency Blog

While the ANZ and other Bill Express creditors and stakeholders are, I suspect, working through the weekend on a restructure for the business, Newsagents are looking at how they can get out of their Bill Express contract and the associated lease for the equipment Bill Express installed in newsagencies.
When newsagents signed on for Bill Express, […]

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So much of today and the next six days is about the Powerball $50 million jackpot.  Today we have extended our promotion of the jackpot deep into the newsagency including across magazines.  Our encroaching on magazine space is compensated by a refreshed magazine display at our main lottery counter and leading to this.  While we […]

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I love this double sided wrapping paper we have found. In the sample in the photo, one side has the larger hearts and the other side smaller. We have twelve designs to start.  They compliment our folded wrap, rolls, bags and boxes. The challenge with sheeted wrap is where to display while […]

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The Just In bookmarks we are using from newsXpress are working at drawing customer attention to titles just in. We find them especially useful for the low volume titles which can arrive on different days each month. While it’s a small activity on which to focus attention and invest in collateral, it is […]

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Shopping trolleys are a problem for newsagencies and other retail businesses. Their drivers too often care less about the damage they do to fixtures and products when they bump around the shop.
Trolleys often block aisles and make the shopping experience of others less enjoyable.
One way to manage the problem is to make our shops […]

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We have papered right around the counter, up the walls and across the top to promote the $50 million Powerball jackpot.  We have also papered multiple places in the shop with the posters we made yesterday to promote the jackpot.  We have our team also offering the up-sell and several other strategies in play […]

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mX, the daily newspaper from News Ltd is set to launch a mobile version of the newspaper according to B&T.  This will use editorial content from the print edition packaged for consumption through mobile devices.

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Thanks to further discussions with the folks at St.George Bank, we have navigated a way for newsagents to more easily access Optus and Vodafone recharge product. eziPass newsagents who sign for the St.George Bank deal can install a terminal to process Eftpos and credit card transactions as well as dispense Optus and Vodafone recharge. […]

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This school days journal is a product we have at our Sophie Randall business which should work equally well in newsagencies.  It’s a folder with all sorts of sections for recording information about the school experience.  This is the kind of gift item which suits newsagencies.

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We have found a good use for the Bill Express MiAds screen which has not worked in months - to promote the Powerball $50 million jackpot.

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We are promoting food and wine related titles in our category based magazine feature this week. It makes sense because it is the Good Food and Wine Show in Melbourne this weekend.
Connecting with local events like this shows we’re connected with the community - beyond our shop. It provides a framework […]

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Girlfriend with the free mascara has replaced our Men’s Health display between two register points at the counter. Thanks to extra posters from Pacific Magazines we have been able to create a good impression. The display has been up two days and is already working.
I know newsagents come here looking at […]

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While the Queen may be miffed at the photos of the royal wedding in the latest Hello magazine from the UK, the punters love it.  This issue will be a sell out for sure based on sales already - we could have taken three times usual stock and still sell out.

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With Powerball not going off tonight, first division next Thursday will now be worth at least $50 million.  Tattslotto on Saturday is a superdraw worth $19 million, Tuesday’s OzLotto game has jackpotted to $10 million and Wednesday’s Tattslotto has jackpotted to $2.175 million.  This is the best week of jackpots and superdraws I can recall.  […]

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The Age has a good story today about some of the challenges around OnQ and Bill Express. My only comment would be that there could have been more complete coverage of the plight of newsagents.
Newsagents were actively recruited into Bill Express by representatives of the company and through the active endorsement of their association, […]

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Jeff Bezos, Amazon CEO, is reported as saying that 6% of titles sold by Amazon.com are for its Kindle e-book reader.   That is a significant shift from print in the short time Kindle has been out.

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The Age on May 23 ran a cartoon by Wiley which showed a chap reading the poster in front of a newsstand
Today in The Times. Print media isn’t dead. Go to our website for the whole story.
I thought it was funny and didn’t think much more about it. Gaye Lebardon writing at […]

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Newsagents have been split into two classes by the folks at The Age. Retail newsagents are paid a commission as a percentage of the cover price. Home delivery newsagents, the people who get up in the middle of the night to manage the delivery of newspapers to homes by 6am are no longer […]

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It has been a thrill to catch up with so many Tower Newsagents at the ANF convention these last three days.  They are a happy bunch of people.  This is a common comment from all of the Tower team at the convention - how happy our users are.  Back in the mid 1990s when our […]

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The Powerball jackpot tonight is generating excellent business for us.  It is a traffic and sales bonanza and we are certainly making the most of the opportunity.  My excitement is somewhat dampened by the news from Manaccom about their online OzLotteries deal with ACP.  Theirs is an interesting play since it is outside the sites […]

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We don’t sell Mills & Boon books in our newsagency but if we did I’d want to have the Mills & Boon range of greeting cards.
They are a nice fun take on the covers of the popular Mills and Boon books. I can see the cards and books being displayed next to […]

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Congratulations to Doug and Tracey Otter of Williamstown Newsagency for winning retail Newsagent of the Year and to Melbourne Central Newsagency for winning Distribution Newsagent of the Year at the ANF Convention dinner tonight.

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Finally the magazine distributors have started to get serious about IT compliance in newsagencies through their XchangeIT platform.  Their presentation today made it clear that DOS is dead.  For all their bleating that DOS has a life, POS Solutions has been ignored and their remaining 300 DOS users will have to make alternative arrangements to […]

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Decades of faithful support from newsagents of the Trading Post weekly newspaper has been “rewarded” by the publisher choosing Australia Post as the partner for its expanded online Trading Post auction offering. Traders will need to go to an Australia Post outlet (and stand in a line for too long) to complete a 100 […]

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The elephant in the room at the ANF National Convention this week has been the Bill Express issue. Just about every newsagent I meet asks what is likely to happen and whether they will have to pay back the lease they took out on the equipment. Like so much about Bill Express at the […]

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