Month: September 2007

As I blogged here on August 16, we are taking a different approach to some long shelf life titles such as Australian Open Gardens. We have now sold 18 copies when we would usually have sold 4 by now.

Most newsagents, on seeing a long shelf life title, will typically take a set and forget approach. We are now taking a different approach for some of these long shelf life titles and chasing sales in the first few weeks. With Open Gardens, the VTAC Guide and a couple of others it has worked. Finding the appropriate high traffic area space to drive sales is a challenge.

A month after a significant makeover of the business magazine segment (including property and news titles) and sales are up. Most major titles are showing growth. Some smaller titles are showing growth but less so. What we are seeing is greater efficiency – more two and three title sales – this was a key goal of the makeover.

For too long in our newsagency business, property and news magazines were the forgotten cousin. We spent all our time elsewhere because sales in the business segment were tiny by comparison. Spending time relaying and attending to the display every few days is proving to be worthwhile.

We are supporting the launch of the excellent Little Ears reading magazine today by creating a new temporary children’s category between Women’s Weekly and Woman’s Day. We have achieved excellent results with this space in recent weeks promoting health and other special interest titles. This is our first crack at Children’s titles.

In support of the focus of Little Ears, we have carefully selected the supporting titles. By focusing on Letterand, Barney, The Wiggles and Parents, we have created a section of quality and respected titles. Hopefully this will generate good sales of the titles and especially the launch of Little Ears.

We have also located Little Ears in our usual Children’s section. It will be interesting to see which location generates the best sales. Based on the health experience in this space between two top selling women’s titles I’d expect the Woman’s day / Women’s Weekly space to do the best.

We are planning to use this space for several of the launches over the next few weeks – Great Walks and Elevator to name two of the new titles. Not all new titles lend themselves to this treatment. The key is the connection with female shoppers.

This Sheedy / Hird souvenir from the AFL is timely with the AFL finals starting this coming weekend. Newsagents handle one off titles such as this better than other retailers. We’ve put it at the counter as well as above the Herald Sun in our newspaper stand given that most sales will be on impulse.

Interest in Aussie rules football being what it is in Melbourne, a title like this is essential to reinforcing our community credentials. My only criticism is that it has been released a week too late – it would have been a good Father’s Day gift.

The aisle end display for Burke’s Backyard has worked a treat with two copies left after less than a week. We usually return two or three copies.

The keys to the success of this promotion, beyond the good product itself, are the bright cover and poster, the free seeds, the excellent range of point of sale material and the seasonal relevance of the promotion.

Not having to create additional display material in-store is important for time poor newsagents. The publishers who provide the best POS materials consistently tend to win the battle for display space allocation.

The only challenge with strong early sales is the need to get more product to support a broader Spring gardening display.

This tribute to Peter Brock from the folks at Wheels magazine is a good offer. Outside of car racing Peter Brock is loved by Australians.

By packing the Brock tribute with a couple of back issues they are attracting new readers to their offer and saluting the master of car racing at the same time. I often complain about bonus packs of magazines. This time it makes sense – the special tribute will attract new readers who may be interested in the back issues. Where this process is abused is if publishers back back issues of a regular issue of a magazine – issues the regulars have probably read. Well done to the Wheels team!