Month: June 2007

Are these the credentials of a State Government concerned about small business? I think not.

The State Labor Government of NSW has presided over a dramatic fall in the commission paid to small business newsagents for transport tickets. With commission now at 2% of ticket price one has to wonder at the value of the transaction except for the fear of losing add-on sales.

Transport tickets used to be good business with a fair commission. Now, commission is unfair. At 2% newsagents cannot cover wages, insurance, rent, shrinkage and all the other costs of opening the doors.

A newsagent I was talking with yesterday has had $500.00 in commission taken from them because of lack of support from the NSW State Government. Where is labour small business policy in this? Victoria is next. Another State Labour Government and newsagents and other small businesses face unfair commission.

I am back on the Gold Coast today for the second day of the ANF conference sessions. Following my presentation today I met with a couple of and talked about the future of the channel. They are relatively new to the newsagency space and as such don’t have the baggage of politics and supplier fear and or devotion (depending of your view of the world).

These two have bold plans to push the envelope of the definition of a newsagency. They plan to keep the core but shrink its footprint and to create around this core a bold new retail concept.

I am hearing more of this. Entrepreneurial newsagents making decisions which are appropriate to their demographic and reflective of their skills. I am all for this – the more entrepreneurial newsagents, as opposed to process worker newsagents, the better. While some suppliers will lose out – because entrepreneurs will demand more control of their businesses, the channel as a whole will be stronger.

A side issue to the growth in entrepreneurial newsagents is that the definition of newsagent will need to be more flexible than it has been in the past. It would be a shame to see industry associations reject newsagencies of the future because they do not sufficiently stick to the past.

Footnote: the photo of the Gold Coast beach was taken this morning – so much for Queensland sun.

Despite it being put about that magazine distributor NDD is not moving forward with plans to use First Fleet for distribution, it has been suggested to me that deep within both companies discussions continue.

I delivered the first of two workshops at the Australian Newsagents’ Federation’s Convention on the Gold Coast this morning. My topic was using best practice IT to navigate to the newsagency of the future.

Tom Carter, a newsagent in South Australia, was the first person I ever heard talk about the need for us to consider the newsagency of the future and that was years ago. The business he owns with his wife, June, is one of the examples in my presentation. I have blogged about it here before.

It seems to me that newsagents are like the deer staring in the headlights. Many are paralysed by fear of what they see in front of them. Newsagents know that newspaper sales are flat or falling, magazines the same, lotteries starting to move online and stationery sales being chased by every person and their dog.

While the bright lights of this reality stop most, there are some good examples of newsagents using technology to drive extraordinarily successful businesses. Rather than spending too long on a grand plan, these entrepreneurial newsagents are evolving their businesses today and with excellent success. In my presentation I talk about four businesses – yes there are plenty more than that – including June and Tom Carter’s newsagency in Adelaide.

Many newsagents, the ones staring at the headlights, are waiting for answered to be delivered to them. These are the newsagents most at risk.

The call to action of my presentation to the ANF Convention today and again on Wednesday is that the newsagency of the future is here, now, in our newsagencies and that all it takes is for us to use our IT systems – regardless of the brand – to cultivate data to guide our decisions.

The hour long presentation barely opens the door on consideration of the newsagency of the future. It’s likely I’ll develop an expanded presentation to share with newsagents elsewhere later this year.

Footnote: There are some who called on me to not attend the ANF convention because of the war between the ANF and the state newsagent associations in Queensland and New South Wales. I accepted the invitation from the ANF mid way through 2006, during a moment of peace, when I spoke at the QNF State Conference on a similar topic. Given the 1,400+ newsagents in the Tower Systems community, I felt it appropriate to accept the invitation and encourage newsagents to become more entrepreneurial.