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GNS needs to be transformed for a bright future for newsagents in stationery

The leadership team at GNS ought take the opportunity of the departure of the organisation’s CEO to consider the future of the business, to undertake an honest appraisal of recent years and lay out a plan relevant to the future rather than pay homage to past.

Stationery retail and wholesale has changed. Newsagencies have changed. Retail has changed. And while GNS has changed, it has not changed enough. I think this is why the organisation is confronted by the most important challenge of its history, the challenge of survival.

Rather than appointing a new CEO right away, the GNS Board needs a plan, they need to demonstrate they have the leadership skills necessary to guide GNS to a future.

While you could argue the Board needs to hire a new CEO to come up with a new plan, in that scenario the Board needs to be prepared for a new CEO to ask for a new Board. That is where I would start. I’d want a Board dominated by high-calibre strategists who bring fresh eyes and perspective to GNS. I’d ensure the number of newsagents or ex-newsagents on the Board is in the minority.

On the future of the GNS business itself, I suggest implementing changes to make the business more efficient, relevant and future-focussed. I have canvassed most of these ideas with GNS in the past.

But before I get into the ideas, I acknowledge some of these are radical. The thing is, GNS is in a challenging situation right now because the organisation has not kept up, it has not been disruptive or radical. I’d go as far as to say the challenge confronting GNS today is for survival.

Today, there is no time for the old model. The future of the supply of stationery to newsagents is generationally removed from the GNS model today.

Here are my suggestions.

  1. Close cash and carry. This is a small small business service that is not worth the financial overhead. While some will criticise this, I suspect an analysis of the numbers will show it is not worth it.
  2. Cut the rep team. Sales reps for wholesalers of commodity products like stationery cost a business $100,000 a year or more allowing for salary, super, on-costs, vehicle and travel expenses. These reps need to achieve at least $2,000,000 in revenue a year to cover their costs. Allowing for holidays, training days etc, each rep would need to write at least $10,000 in orders every day just to cover their costs. Reps are a cost big business competitors do not have on the same scale. To be competitive, we need a lower cost base.
  3. Establish a state of the art call centre. Skilled in telesales. Some handling incoming sales calls but with the majority handling outbound calls.
  4. Develop a brilliant website for retailers to make ordering easy and pitching new products easy. Include in this site an auto-replenishment facility to help newsagents maintain stock of regularly moving items without the labour overhead of reordering. This technology has been around for years. I have seen it help several retail channels leverage terrific success.
  5. Develop a brilliant customer-facing website retailers can leverage for stationery sales for newsagents. GNS has had too many goes at an e-commerce solution and each time it has not even reached mediocrity.
  6. Develop an IT infrastructure to facilitate drop shipping of orders of appropriate size from suppliers to newsagents. While this would require volume that most newsagents could not meet, those that do could benefit from even better prices.
  7. Develop a newsagency stationery performance dashboard. Let newsagents easily see what stationery is selling in their area. Let them compare their stationery performance with the national, state and regional average, by category and by brand, easily.
  8. Retreat to one state of the art warehouse. This frees the capital in the various properties around the country, the labour associated with its current warehouse network. At the same time, establish a better shipping infrastructure.
  9. Develop a strong stationery brand (not sovereign) for newsagents to use for stationery in-store. Commit a percentage of all revenue to marketing this sub brand nationally. Done properly, this will rally newsagents, regardless of the brand of their newsagency, behind a national unifying brand. Good marketing will reposition our channel in terms of the stationery offer.
  10. Get the house brand right. The Sovereign brand is not respected. The house brand should be the brand mentioned in point 7 above.
  11. Reintroduce trade shows. Once a year. Capital cities. This helps replace the closure of cash and carry.
  12. Establish an office of strategy. Undertake research that is relevant to GNS and to newsagents and share the results with newsagents to help better inform their planning decisions.
  13. Communicate better.

I don’t see this list as complete. It is where I’d start, urgently. Steps beyond this list would depend on what is discovered through the process.

Our channel will have somewhere between 2,000 and 2,500 newsagency businesses in the next year to eighteen months. GNS needs to be structured to deal with this, so these businesses can grow stationery sales.

70 likes
Newsagency challenges

Join the discussion

  1. Colin

    Spot on Mark.

    Had a similar conversation with Ancol manager about reps. He didn’t get it. His response is the newsagents wouldn’t like it.

    He has a point. I understand less than 10% of newsagents are using their software to reorder, many instead wait for a rep to arrive.

    I suggested discounts for customers who bought on line. That fell on deaf ears. As I said to him ….”But why should I pay more to support the luddites ?”

    2 likes

  2. eric

    i still prefer go to GNS warehouse than using their websites and I purchase more there than just using their website. It is more convenient for me to go there where I spend average 3 hours every week. Their new gift lines are not my taste, Can someone there employs somebody better taste.

    7 likes

  3. Chris

    The issue is that the board has not changed for years. There needs to be renewal at the boardroom level.
    Its easy to say that no-one else has nominated so thats why it is still the same. GNS need to be more pro-active in seeking new board members to drive through change.

    13 likes

  4. Mark R

    I agree with Mark Fletcher with regards to the board in my previous experience on the Ancol board the board members who were all Newsagents were well meaning good people.

    But as Mark has suggested the company needs board members with higher skill set and a different approach to effect the changes required .

    I find it hard to comprehend how a board can refuse to embrace significant change when stationery sales through Newsagencies have declined. Surely sales should define the argument.

    To often boards and CEO’s want to blame factors which are out of their control ie blame poor Newsagents of blame increased competition blame the economy,ive heard all the excuses before.

    But the bottom line is the board is in the drivers seat, they are in control of the companies destiny they have no one else to blame but themselves if they are unwilling to introduce new highly skilled board members , ego’s need to be keep out of it

    12 likes

  5. Ted

    This is a thoughtful strategy overview from Mark. It is something we have not seen from GNS or the ANF on any topic. Mark I hope the GNS board gets you in for a discussion as you cover issues that are vital to the future of the business newsagents own.

    2 likes

  6. June

    Mark F and Mark R You are both stalwarts of our industry and deserve accolades for your efforts over the last 20 or so years. As a 40 year agent I found it easier to source elsewhere when I could not source the type of product I wanted. I think Ancol have improved their offering exponentially in the last few years and, hopefully we will all reap the benefits of that. Personally, our stationery is up by 11% over the previous year. Probably due to us retiring and our family taking the reins!!!!!

    2 likes

  7. Warrick Hosking

    Just wondering who is on the GNS board and what is there background and skills.

    1 likes

  8. SUBARU

    They need to fix the quality of data coming on the EDI invoices. Pack Qty / Sell qty is my major gripe with them.

    i can’t implement any form of auto ordering when the pack qtys are the way they are.

    Warrick, as far as I understand, there is one current newsagent on the board. The rest seem to be ex-newsagents who are no longer in touch with the current customer requirements and marketplace

    2 likes

  9. MARK RICHARDSON

    Is a annual profit and loss report made available to share holders ? names of directors should also be included

    2 likes

  10. Mark Fletcher

    This post continues to be a hot topic. Every day last week I received either a call and / or emails from newsagents and suppliers about this. The most common view is GNS is lost unless urgent action is taken to save it.

    2 likes

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