My feeling is that newsagency businesses in shopping malls rely more on passers-by than newsagencies on the high street – maybe more so in capital city locations than in regional and rural situations. My own experience is that around a third of all customers are not regulars. This makes the display at the front of the business mission-critical. Get this wrong and we reduce the traffic drawn into the business.
The photo shows the front of the newsagency as it was yesterday. On the left we have a gift feature with Valentine’s Day plush at the front, next to this is an alley of three spinners (behind each other) featuring popular plush, then a magazine floor unit from Pacific Magazines and then three units of Valentine’s Day cards and on the far right, two posters promoting an in-store competition (one customer will win a tablet computer) connected with an ink campaign.
We adjust the front-of-store pitch during the week and make more significant changes on the weekend. We leave two key traffic routes with enough room either side for a shopping trolley.
In our displays across the front of the newsagency we seek to be: relevant to people in the mall, interesting, reflecting value and fun.
The measures of success are foot traffic followed by sales. We measure ourselves against ourselves and not an expectation as to what a newsagency is. Year on year, traffic and sales are ahead of the newsagency channel average.
I am posting this information here to show that it’s not rocket-achieve. No, running a successful newsagency today is all abut being an engaged retailer responding to changes around us and customer demand.
Click on the image for a larger version.