Australian Newsagency Blog

We are playing in the jigsaw puzzle space at Forest Hill and early sales are very good. Our team has selected puzzles based on successes from our calendar range.  The Planet Zoo range looks great!  Each features an appealing image.  There is a social responsibility connection - a portion of each sale is donated to […]

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Calendars are continuing to sell at the rate of between ten and twenty a day at our newsagencies.  We are fortunate to be achieving a margin of 60% on the discounted price.  Watching customer behaviour, they are now more add-ons to existing purchases rather than destination purchases.  There are some categories in our businesses which […]

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I served a customer yesterday who had been told by a friend to come to our newsagency for a calendar for her favourite dog breed. This customer drove past two major shopping centres in 46 degree heat to get the calendar – for her dog. She bought another calendar, a magazine and a […]

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For newsagents wanting to break into calendars, I can recomment Bartel.  Their range of Australian calendars sells well in each of my newsagencies.  We go out early (September) and achieve good sales from people sending calendars as gifts overseas.  I especailly like that they offer regional calendars - Mornington Peninsular for example for our Frankston […]

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Most of the calendars we sell in our newsXpress Forest Hill store we selected by title, carefully based on past year sales data and with attention to our demographic.  Like special interest magazines, our calendars speak to range.  They pull customers in looking for special interest titles - because they have seen them before in our […]

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Our calendar sales in November were up 6% on November 2007 at our Forest Hill store.  December to last night is nicely ahead as well.  With no discounting I would note. This is a solid result given the excellent numbers for last year and that we had a Card and Diary outpost out the front […]

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newsXpress has provided its members with copies of this double sided A2 poster to promote the 2009 Calendar range. Click on the thumbnail for a larger image. The idea behind the poster is to promote range. With most newsagents only selling magazine distributor and card company calendars, the newsXpress approach allows us […]

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The latest part for the Elvis partwork is appropriately Christmas themed. We are using this as an opportunity to pitch it as a gift idea for the season. The calendar and CD are a good-value gift priced at $19.95. It is good to find Christmas gift ideas in regular products we carry […]

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These small keychain calendars are selling well at the counter at our newsagencies. I am sure they would not sell as well if we placed them elsewhere - away from the counter. They are a perfect impulse item. I have noticed they are popular with older women who are pleased to have […]

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It surprises me sometimes the products which we sell in Australian newsagencies. Take the 2009 calendar for The Broons, a soap-opera comic strip developed around seventy years ago in Scotland. This is a product for a highly specialised market. Given our sales of Scottish magazines we are a good candidate for receiving […]

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Our team at Forest Hill has reused an old display unit for our range of small magnetic day-to-a-page calendars. This small unit fits nicely right at the front corner of the counter next to the ACP magazine display stand. All too often specially built display units are trashed once the purpose for which they […]

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We promoted the 4 Ingredients calendar as a Calendar of the Week. While the margin is not what we would prefer, this is an exclusive line for newsagents. I know that a national retailer sought to purchase 20,000 units and the publishers declined, preferring to support newsagents instead.  Hence our decision to feature […]

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We are early returning this and other calendars to Network Services having previously advised them that we do not wish to receive non magazine title calendars through them. We have a similar themed organiser calendar from another supplier delivering more than double the margin of the network supplied product. There is no point […]

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Our calendar sales in September were up 72% at Forest Hill and 37% at Frankston.
At Forest Hill the increase is driven by having a solid range on display early in the calendar season.
At Frankston it is thanks to a new point of difference - previously this store focused on magazine distributor calendars. We are […]

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This paper plane set is one of the boxed calendars we have on offer for 2009. I like it because it loosely connects with newsagents and what we sell. Calendars like these separate us from other calendar retailers. The more we present ourselves as specialists the better.

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We have revised our counter offer at Forest Hill - introducing small magnetic day to a page calendars. This display has been in place for a week and is achieving good results. The high price and good margin make each calendar worth more than a candy bar. We have been careful in […]

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We have a table of small desk calendars on display between our diaries and calendars. This is a considerably bigger range of desk calendars than we had last year. It is different to what you would expect to see in a newsagency - because we have sourced this from non newsagent suppliers. […]

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Our team at our Frankston newsagency refuses to let the big old column at the front of the shop get in the way of promoting product.
They have just wrapped the column in black as a background for a four-sided calendar display.  This is in addition to product filled calendar stands at the front of the […]

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We placed a stack of 2009 desk calendar blocks at the counter, next to our good selling Angel Flames candles, several weeks ago.  Sales have been excellent.  Our price is $2.00.  While others will be cheaper, at this price point we are not finding any resistance - people are happy to have got one while […]

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You know the year is rushing to the finish line when calendars arrive in-store. Being early with a good range of calendars is important for the overseas gift purchases. This why the early range out now includes plenty of Australiana product. Year on year, calendars are growing more than 10% is newsagencies […]

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Newsagents are getting inundated by suppliers to sign up for mobile recharge and eftpos arrangements including two faxes from my own business (but no calls from us).  Given my earlier post this morning about evidence suggesting the ANF is getting 40% of available commission and the newsagent getting 60%, I suggest to newsagents that they […]

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It’s the middle of January and calendars are continuing to sell well. We bought 1,000 additional calendars ten days ago at a good discount just for this purpose - the January sales. The decision is paying off with sales of $200+ a day some days.  We are still only discounting 50%.

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