Here is a good example of good local marketing by a newsagent. Ewan and Rod Carr at newsXpress Armidale discovered local tomatoes featured in Australian Country Style. Customers buying the magazine go in the draw for a free tray of Guyra tomatoes.
It is always good to see newsagents engaging with their local community in this way.
Newsagencies are traditional businesses, built on more than 100 years of regulation. This is why many in our community take the regulation (protection) route in making business decisions. For so many years newsagents have fought for their territory, whether territory refers to a geographic area or a product category connection. Unfortunately, some in our channel remain focused on regulation to the detriment of commercial reality. I would call these folks the traditionalists. Others chase opportunities regardless of boundaries. They put their business and its stakeholders ahead of tradition. I would call these folks the commercial realists. But I digress.
I have been wondering these past few days whether to jump into the magazine subscriptions pond. I mean really jump and offer subscriptions for just about any title. Should I use my retail newsagency to aggressively sell subscriptions?
The traditionalists will say no – why take a lesser commission when you could make full commission on the retail sales. Why take business off another newsagent. Every subscription sold is a sale lost to the newsagent channel – even if the subscription and therefore the sale are outside my territory.
To a commercial realist, business is business. Their approach would be to take what you can when you can. They would say that a lesser than retail commission for a full year on a product you would not otherwise sell to that person is good business for your business.
While I respect the traditionalist newsagents, I must say that I am drawn to the views of the commercial realists as it is in their world in which we operate today. In each of our core categories: newspapers, magazines, stationery, lotteries and greeting cards we have businesses competing with us in commercial terms. If we reject these terms and opportunities associated with them in favour of a more traditional approach then we are likely to be left behind.
So, what do I do about magazine subscriptions? I am not sure yet as I have some more research to do in order to package the best over the counter offer in a way which is easy to pitch and a dream to manage. It may be that this research results in barriers which suggest that subscriptions are not an appropriate over the counter offering.
In navigating toward thenewsagency of the future, newsagents need to decide if they are to be a traditionalist or to be a commercial realist. The former, while to be respected, will find business tougher.
The folks at MX, the free daily in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane from News Ltd, must be aware of Project Freesheet given this ad I saw in the Sydney paper Thursday night – they may have been running it a while, I don’t get MX that often. Project Freesheet is a not for profit project which aims to raise awareness about the impact on the environment of the millions of free newspapers distributed around the world every day.
The ad asks us to take MX home and put in your household recycling bin when you are done reading.
There are some good stories about free newspaper trash and related environmental issues at the Project Freesheet Blog.
Two months ago Carsales arranged a feed of vehicle ads from two vehicle dealers to our Find It online classifieds site. This came about because Carsales provided the software which the dealers use to manage their inventory. Last week, Carsales turned off the feed and told us they would not provide further feeds. This is a pity because we have 35 dealers who use the Carsales software who want to load their stock data to our site.
I could write more but the threat of legal action by Carsales makes me leave it at that for the moment.
Car ads are free at Find It. We think that individuals and dealers pay too much for online ads. Hence our decision to make them free and to partner with newsagents to help Australians save millions of dollars.
The Arizona Rebublic reports that American Greetings (parent company of John Sands) has launched a line of greeting cards around the humor and a cartoon likeness of Ellen DeGeneres. What I found interesting in the report was this:
Pat Sandy, program director for humorous-card planning at American Greetings, said the 32-card Ellen line is a result of extensive humor research that found women buy the majority of greeting cards, and those women are attracted to humor that is reality-based and inclusive.
While we know from Australian research that women buy most greeting cards in Australia, I would be interested to find out what Australian women look for in a humor based card because, frankly, most of what we have is American and UK designed product.
The DeGeneres line of cards can be seen here. Given the popularity of her show on Foxtel I’d expect to see the cards available here.
I feel sorry for the person from McGraths Hill in NSW advertising the Millard Horizon 2002 campervan in this weeks Sydney edition of the Trading Post. The advertising folks demonstrate that money speaks and cover the Millard Horizon ad with a post it type ad for NRMA Insurance. It is not a good look for NRMA – big business paying to cover up a regular person’s ad.
When you rip the NRMA ad off, part of the text for the Millard Horizon ad comes with it – in my case I cannot read the phone number. I don’t like the stuck on ads. They are either desecrating revered mastheads or showing individual advertisers, as in the case with the Sydney Trading Post, that they don’t matter.
The Victorian branch of GNS, the stationery wholesaler owned by newsagents, is offering a 10% discount on a stationery order to any newsagent joining Newspower, the marketing group for newsagents now controlled by GNS, in July.
I own shares in GNS as do most newsagents – I acquired the shares, units back then, as part of a mandatory levy on every purchase through GNS. It is disappointing that GNS is using profit from my business and other non Newspower newsagents to support Newspower and that they are doing this while blocking competition. As I blogged here last week, GNS has banned newsXpress from its trade shows, the only trade shows for newsagents in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane.
Newsagents are benefiting from competition between Newspower, newsXpress, Nextra and others. Each group is improving its offering as a result of competition. A strong Newspower would not need protecting nor the 10% stationery discount deal like is being offered in Victoria at present.
In Sydney tonight I detoured into Wynyard station to see the MX free daily newspaper distribution model in action there. In addition to the free standing collection points as shown in the photo, I counted eight people in a short space offering free newspapers to everyone heading home from work.
The people distributing MX seemed more proactive – and much happier – than the people I saw handing our the free newspapers in London late last year.
Newsagents in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane ought to make a field trip one weekday afternoon to see the MX distribution team in action., Given the growth of free daily newspapers overseas and the growth of free magazines here, being aware of this distribution model and seeing it in action may trigger much needed focus on your own plans for the future.
MediaWeek reports that the team behind Men’s Journal has launched Tradie, a magazine aimed at tradesmen who work on building sites on the east coast of Australia. The print run is over 50,000 with copies being distributed through Mitre-10 stores and direct to building sites. From what I can find out online – through MySpace entries and other forums – Tradie is in the same genre as Zoo Weekly, Picture and People but from a tradesman’s perspective.
A feature of the current Tax Time Bonanza! stationery promotion is the bonus product on offer. For example, anyone buying a box of Double A copy paper get a free file Porta Box valued at between $12.00 and $15.00. This bonus offer is exclusive to newsXpress, meaning no one can compete. It is more valuable for me to have this exclusive hero product offer than, say, Reflex paper which other retailers have on special regularly. Newsagents need a point of difference in their stationery pitch given that Australia Post corporaste stores and others are competing agressively with a newsagent type offering.
The free bonus pitches the copy paper at the home office market. It offers a practical bonus product Anyone buying a GBC CL90 laminator gets 25 A5 laminating pouches free.
The photo shows the front and back to Dynamic Business. The challenge is which side do you give the facing to? Given how is arrived in the bundle our team thought it was an export title and considered it to be of little interest to our demographic. Flip it over and there is the better known masthead. While the label generated by the point of sale software provides the details.
Sometimes, on a busy magazine day, there is little time to read the detail of the labels. We sorted it out and now display Dynamic Business as opposed to some obscure export title – I wonder if others had the same experience. This is not the only title to have a dual cover. When publishers do that it would be good for newsagents to be provided a heads up which includes the reasoning behind the decision and suggested action.
As the Bakery Australia website says, The National Bread Day has been conceived to popularise the consumption of bread across the country by creating awareness of its dietary and nutritional values. Brilliant.
As I blogged here a month ago, in the UK they have Magazine Week for similar reasons – to popularise magazines. Indeed, at their website they say: We started Magazine Week because we wanted everyone to know just how big and diverse the UK magazine industry is, with a magazine for every available lifestyle, hobby or interest. Brilliant again!
Newsagents could launch magazine week and own the concept in consumer’s minds. If we got the pitch right we should see a sales kick and greater loyalty to our channel compared to the other channels selling magazines. Key to such a week or a day is to have the pitch right and consistent across the channel and to support this with a giveaway – like the Bakers Delight booklet given free to every customer today (see photo). Brilliant.
If we are the magazine specialists we need to find a way to own that concept. A Magazine Week or a Magazine Day could do the trick. If publishers, the MPA or associations get behind this, I’d love to be involved.
We capped our magazine area with over thirty metres of light boxes for magazine posters when we moved to our current location five years ago. While I’d prefer to have LCD screens capping magazines, these light boxes still work well. They look especially good when publishers make sure we have sufficient poster material to boldly promote a title. The issue of Australian Womens Weekly out today is a good example.
As is the current issue of Better Homes and Gardens.
This is bold in-store support above and beyond the aisle end displays, co-location and front of house posters demonstrate the difference between a newsagency and, say, a supermarket or convenience outlet selling magazines.
Publishers need to keep good quantities of these materials flowing for without them newsagents cannot create good display and fill their light boxes.
The eftpos poll is three days old. Of the 147 who have voted so far, 100 of those voting, hopefully newsagents, say they do not charge any eftpos fees. 36 charge under 50 cents, 8 charge a percentage and 3 charge $1.00 or less. I am surprised at the range and that so many newsagents do charge a fee. Here is the link if you have not voted yet:
Eleven years ago when I bought my newsagency we had one and a half metres of adult magazines. Today, we barely have one column – not counting the column with Zoo Weekly, Ralph and FHM.
The photo shows the new adult section as I see it in an average newsagency.
While different demographics will require a different range, sales data I see from other newsagencies suggests that a column or less is all that is needed to service the adult category. The Internet and the establishment of petrol outlets as a viable magazine channel mean that adult is not the category it was for newsagents eleven years ago.
It is disappointing that some distributors continue to overload some newsagents in the adult category by supplying more product than can be justified by the sales data. Often, when this is brought to their attention, they fix the problem. This should not have to happen, distributors ought to scale back based on the sales data and not a complaint from a noisy bugger like me.
Spinners are a nightmare in retail. They block sightlines and can make a store look messy. We removed several last year and vowed we would not bring in. All we kept were two sticker spinners – which work a treat. Two months ago we relented and agreed to a trial – for the activity books spinner in the photo. These activity books are performing better in terns of sell through, return of floor space and return on investment than half the magazines we carry.
We have carried activity books in the past but without the success of this range.
We have looked at whether we could locate the range elsewhere and remove the spinner. The challenge is that the spinner itself allows us the ability to move the product. For example, is school holidays we located it near our activity table, during the Tax Time Bonanza! sale, it is near that display … and so on. Watching customers as they browse and buy off the spinner, it is clear that it needs to be in a high traffic area. So, the spinner stays for the moment, for as long as we see a commercially viable return.
The New York Times has published a front page article that will interest any Rupert Murdoch watcher.
Boys of all ages love to browse Mad magazine (yours truly included) so imagine the shock to find this issue wrapped in plastic. No, it not is full of adult images, they have sent two free issues with this current issue.
While the freebies are a nice gesture, the plastic bagging will hurt sales, or lead to trash, since Mad is highly browsed.
The best alternative I can think of would be to have the giveaway product at the counter and a sticker on the cover promoting this. At least browsers would be satisfied.
One of the biggest challenges newsagents have when bringing in a new line is location. Too often the product is displayed in such a way that makes finding the right location difficult. Such was the case with the inspirational cards and mini books. We have these for several years, in one form or another, but it has only been in the last few weeks that we created a small display at the end of one of our card aisles that they started to work for us. Here is a photo of what we did:
The easy comment is that we should have done this ages ago. Time and space were a challenge. It was only when we moved the Darrell Lea display from this aisle end and bought the table that we were able to use the space in this way. Now, instead of having these small, and annoying, spinners spread in various places, we have them grouped together. As well as each line selling better, we are finding customers buying two or three.
Our message for sales reps out of this is: as well as promoting product, show us via photos how to best display it in a busy and real-estate poor newsagency. Otherwise the spinner gets shoved from pillar to post, as we did, until either it is tossed or re-born when space and time provide the opportunity.
Our message for ourselves is to pay more attention to the stock we have and to keep working categories until we find the best way to display them in our store so that we achieve the return we need.
It has been suggested to me that the media speculation of two weeks ago about the future of government ownership of Australia Post may have been half right. I am told that one proposal is a management facilitated buyout of the retail network, leaving the distribution business in government hands. While such a move would not address international best practice in terms of the postal service, it would put significant dollars into the government coffers.
We yesterday published a new advice sheet on how to undertake a stock take using the Tower Systems newsagent software.
We have followed the GNS Mid Year Sale with the newsXpress Tax Time Bonanza! sale. The range of products is quite different. The Tax Time offer has more branded product. It also extends my range into areas where newsagents have been weak. I particularly like that I have a paper offer which is not matched by Australia Post, K-Mart and others as happened with the GNS sale.
We have a long table on our dance floor with all the products. Traffic is being driven by the promotional flyers distributed around the centre and at the front of our shop.
This is the second of these two page flyers we have distributed under the newsXpress banner this year. The regular pitch of stationery in these flyers is important, in my view, to re-educating consumers about newsagents, particularly newsXpress newsagents, and the stationery range and price offers – built around brand name product.
On the weekend I blogged welcoming the price increase for the Sunday Herald Sun. While newspaper publishers continue to be shy at adjusting cover prices even to keep up with CPI, magazine publishers are not. Auto Action, Picture Premium and Rugby League Week all have cover prices coming. Keeping up with CPI helps newsagents keep up with rent and wage rises. If only the newspaper publishers understood that.