We have the Royal Wedding calendar out on display as part of our calendar offer. This is a test of interest in the Royal Wedding earlier this year.
On calendars more generally, our sales are up 145% for November to date. This is off an excellent sales base last year. 145% growth is excellent. We’re feeling very positive about calendar sales this year. And, yes, there is a calendar Club in our centre with their usual push. Plus we have three retailers nearby selling calendars.
We put our calendar sales growth down to having a good range in a high traffic location and making the range easy for shoppers to browse.
Calendars sales are tracking at 15% of magazine sales. This has been my target ratio of calendar revenue to magazine revenue for several years. It’s a useful target KPI for newsagents.
Calendars have been going great guns here too so far. Thanks to what I picked up from the blog here last year I’ve added Brown Trout calendars to the usual fare as well as adding the Blue Mountain Art calendars. The BMA stand is nearly empty already and the Brown Trout calendars have been moving at a great rate too !
Just as an aside I’ve noticed that people have just started to post calendars so the next few weeks should see that go from a trickle to a flood with a resultant upsurge in calendar sales hopefully.
Hmm, so can someone please share what the secret is to selling calendars?
We have Brown Trout, Steve Parish & Biscay all on spinners (2 outside & 1 inside the shop) & have only sold 1 of each!!
This is our 1st year with Brown Trout & I was really hoping they would be a success – but not so far.
Any tips to increase sales would be appreciated.
I think its partly just when your area takes off Narelle though I’m only guessing. Last year I didn’t have the calendar range and didn’t have them out as early and probably lost sales because of it. I have a single Brown Trout spinner (I’m in a strip shopping centre to put it into perspective) and I’m seeing something sold from there pretty well every day (so not huge volume but still nice to be ticking over ) so far with quite a few browsing but not buying (yet hopefully !). The best thing from my perspective is that most of the BMA and Brown Trout calendars have be add on sales and not what the customer came in to buy so have been great basket extenders.
Looking at the data from last year, it’s in the next two weeks for me that calendar sales should really start to take off. This coincides with the start of the heavy Christmas mailing traffic starting on my post office counter.
I just actually ran the report and while I have calendars in two different categories, the aggregated average total is running at pretty well 318% to this time last year but from a low base with little variety.
Interestingly my diary sales, which seem to tie in somewhat with the calendar sales, are also up 319% to this time last year with an earlier display date so it will be interesting to see whether the sales fall off later in the season or are maintained the whole way through.
Mark would be the best one for advice but I’ve just located my BMA and BT stands right at my news counter, and for me at least, it seems to be there that they’re catching peoples eye (I’ve noticed ALOT of browsers ). Interestingly the large stand of magazine related calendars located at the door are selling at a much slower rate to the other two.
I realy can’t understand this interest for royal weddingd..they are spectacular..ok! But they are like..only a dream for regular people..like us.
Paul, Many thanks for your feedback. We are also in a strip shopping centre and have had people browsing but few sales – hopefully the browsers now know we have a great selection of calendars & will come back to purchase when they are ready.
Glad to hear your sales of diaries & calendars are going so well – hope you have a great Christmas season!