Nowhere is the difference between newsagency businesses more evident than in the magazine department of a newsagency in the Northern Territory. Comparing this to most suburban east coast newsagencies highlights the difference.
In Humpty Doo in the Northern territory yesterday, I was in a good locally-focussed newsagency business where magazines play an important traffic driving role.
The photo shows the two main magazine units. Both sides are full of magazines.
What is interesting is that the commitment to magazines has not held the owners back from being proactive in other categories, new traffic driving categories.
The situation is helped by limited support for magazines in nearby supermarkets and the usual top sellers only in nearby petrol outlets.
In the shop yesterday I found myself thinking about what I wrote recently calling for magazine publishers to pull back from supermarkets, to make newsagencies magazine specialists.
The more newsagencies I see away from the competition we see in the city the more I am convinced that newsagents can grow magazine sales through genuine commercial partnership with publishers.
In case you missed it, here is the nub of the post:
My proposal is simple – make newsagents the magazine specialists by only supplying them.
This single move, of choosing to place titles exclusively in the newsagency channel, would encourage newsagent support. I am not talking here about one or two titles. No, I am talking about hundreds of titles, popular titles, titles in the top 200 even. Place these exclusively in the newsagency channel and you change the game, you get the attention of newsagents, you push back against the supermarkets and you respect your product.
While I am confident that a bold move such as I outline here would benefit publishers and newsagents it would need careful negotiating, involving many titles and requiring thoughtful newsagent engagement. And, yes, there would need to be a discussion on margin. Rent and labour in retail are considerable expenses and titles not paying their way serve no purpose in any retail business. However, margin can be considered in various forms. For example, there could be a base stocking fee or some other levy to support the category.
If sought after product is only available in one channel then the two main parties to such a relationship, the publisher and newsagents, ought to benefit. We would have a shared commercial objective, far more so than exists today.
In the meantime, it was good this week to see newsagencies in NT representing the channel well.