Marketing your newsagency

I was doing some tidying up yesterday and came across a copy of Marketing your Newsagency, a book I wote for D W Thorpe publishing in 1994. Thorpe published the Australian Newsagent & Stationer, the journal of record for newsagents through the 1980s and 1990s.

While not usually drawn to nostalgia, I did spend an hour leafing through the pages of Marketing your Newsagency – for the first time in at least eight years. I was surprised to read material relevant to the newsagency experience today. Of course, many retail marketing tips are timeless.

It was my comments about franchises which surprised me – I said newsagents ought to get together, re-brand behind a new name and with the disciplines of a franchise structure. While the challenges which existed in 1994 which led to me forming the view I put forward in the book remain today, groups of newsagents are responding and leaving others behind.

Some of what I wrote in Marketing your Newsagency is embarrassing to revisit as it reflected naiveté about some of the challenges newsagents faced at the time – I wrote the book two years before I purchased my first newsagency. However, it is what it is and for the most part, the marketing tips remain useful for any newsagent.

I might spend some time extracting the ideas which are genuinely useful today and repackage them in some form for the use of others. But that’s a project for another day.

I miss the folks at DW Thorpe and Australian Newsagent and Stationer.  It was good a good magazine.