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Volatile magazine sales

decay-blog.JPGThe black line is sales for one of the women’s weeklies we sell for this week to last night and the red line is the average of the last four weeks. The graph comes directly from our point of sale system. I already know that this week will be a sell out for several titles. Woman’s Day yesterday was up 29% on average for a Monday, New Weekly up 18%, New Idea up 25% and TV Week up a whopping 61%. We have done this week what we always do – co-locating the weeklies in two and even three locations depending on the stock we have. The only difference compared to recent weeks is the OzLotto $10 million jackpot tonight (Tuesday) and this has driven some extra traffic. While I am thrilled with the sales kick, the volatility is frustrating. For some titles we will sell out by mid week and the supply chain will not have capacity to replenish our requirements. The scale out model used by magazine publishers and distributors leaves little room for volatility like we are seeing this week – both to recover and to provide capacity with initial delivery. There must be a solution otherwise newsagents will not be able to grow sales to their full potential. I should not sell out of a weekly magazine ever in my view. To sell out three days into the week, as is likely with one major title, is dreadful.

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