Over the weekend I signed a contract to purchase another newsagency. I will disclose the location in a week or so once we get certainty from the landlord. I mention it here because part of the process of reaching a decision to proceed was considering the future of the newsagency channel. While I think there will be fewer newsagencies, my view is that good businesses will prosper.
The newsagency I am purchasing does not have home deliveries or lottery products. This makes it a more pure offering – traffic is not skewed by jackpots and labour is not diverted by home delivery requirements during the day. It is the purity of the offering which is interesting. It means less regulation and therefore greater freedom in navigating change.
Best wishes on your new enterprise Mark, may it be a prosperous endeavour.
Good Luck on the new shop, its a sad day that the channels that used to set newsagencies apart from the rest are now the channels that are holding people back from purchasing newsagencies (deliveries and lotto). At present there is no value gained by selling lotto products or getting up at 3am each morning to deliver papers, the drain on cashflow and also staff resources has made these areas unprofitable but for a few big players. Gone are the days when you had 3 or 4 paperboys that could do the job before school. Newsagencies must be competitive retail outlets first and foremost and if that means cutting loose these non profitable areas then so be it, again Mark Good luck its good to see someone putting thier money where thier mouth is.