In the two and a half months since OK! moved from monthly to weekly sales have been growing from what I can see. This is due to its striking visual point of difference, consistent quality and, in my experience, consistent supply to newsagents – thus enabling us to better display the title. As the photo shows we have positioned OK! with New Idea, Woman’s Day, WHO and Famous. Being in such high traffic real estate, ensures browsing and, with OK!, browsing is key as it builds consumer recognition. We’re also achieving sales having OK! displayed toward the front of the shop near the lottery counter.
I’m not seeing any decline in sales of other weeklies in my newsagency and it is this growth of the category which is most welcome.
The challenge will come if the price moves, as it must. $2.95 for a weekly of this quality is not good for me. I also think it sends the worng message to the consumer once they see the production quality. Based on current sales I need to be making almost double what I am making at the moment to break even on my labour and real estate investment. That’s not a complaint as I’m happy, for the moment, to invest in extending the category.
I must disagree about OK, its a dud publication thats only saving grace is it is cheap. We too have positioned it next to WD and NI taking up valuable real estate and the sales have nowhere near picked up. Our supply is 80 odd a week and we are flat out selling 10. We have even tried putting a stack at the front counter with no results, if this publication sells well for you thats great but I can’t get my supply reduced to the levels I am selling, I have to top and return over 70 copies per issue at present and the benefits to me are nil. I’m sure more valued clients ie mutinationals are this over supplied.
Luke It just goes to show the differences between stores. At the very least we ought to be able to get your supply numbers down to a reasonable level.
the supply issue is my point, the suppliers should look at return levels and adjust accordingly. recently I got a call to join an instore promo for time magazine. we said ok but its a bit hard to do the promo when for the past 2 months we only recieve 1 copy each issue dispite repeated calls to the suppliers. Our industry is backwards, most pay for what they sell, we pay up front and hope to get a credit up to two months later, and if we don’t pay within 30 days we get cut off. every newsagent can tell the same story I know but has it changed not in my lifetime. this is not a gripe but a view on we all face, suppliers that don’t care or are not looking.
The over supply issue has been quite terrible on this publication. We received 70 copies every week for 7 weeks with only averaging 7-10 copies each week sold. With little increase in sales, it makes me wonder why it took so long to decrease overall supply, particularly knowing that sales details of this particular title would have been monitored very closely. We now have a more manageable total of 20 each week.
Vaughan Lawrence
We’ve found Gotch to move quickly in resolving queries. I agree there is no point in being oversupplied if it’s not selling.