I love the information placed with barcodes on magazines in the US. If this were included for Australian titles it would mean newsagents could choose to not label titles. – thus saving time and money. While I like knowing the quantity received when I am doing my shop floor cull, it’s not essential. Magazine publishers keen to help us drive efficiency will consider this. However, it would make it harder to re issue titles … but I’d see that as a good thing. Anything to stop magazines going around and around.
The placement and information on this barcode is brilliant.
Any NA business owner that has a ‘Continuous Improvement Plan’ in place would want this.
For Sub-agent Managing Newsagents it would mean major Distributors for once would be serious when they ask us to help Sub-agents with the returns process. To not have a label that has a Return date or ‘Display until’ date like this example is not being helpful to subagents in managing their magazine returns.
So some Managing Agents who wish to genuinely assist Sub-agents with this are burdened with the additional and I would say unnecessary expense of labelling.
The other aspect that has been mentioned in another thread is the brilliant positioning that would save a heap of shekels from ending up in the dust as a consequence of eliminating the time wasting in hunting for the barcode.
So what is stopping Australian Publishers from doing this?