We have a good range of premium pens in our newsXpress Forest Hill store. They are also in our card shop within a shop. We also have a good range of premium pens in our Sophie Randall shop in the same centre. It’s the extraordinary difference in the shopping experience which I want to blog about today.
In the newsagency time is an issue. I wish it were not, but it is. The shop has a high frequency of medium to low value transactions. Our average basket is just over $6.00. Lottery, newspaper and magazine customers tend to not want to wait for more than a few seconds for service. Premium pen sales take time: we need to unlock the cabinet and assist with the selection. Rents and wages being what they are we don’t run with sufficient loose staff to easily afford assisting a pen customer without it slowing the main counter.
In the Sophie Randall store we experience a different beat. Customers are not in a rush. They will wait at the counter while we serve a pen customer making a careful choice. This difference in attitude – in customers and in us – between the two businesses makes the premium pen category a better fit in the Sophie Randall store.
That is not to say we ought to get out of pens in the newsagency. Rather, I am saying that we are not getting it as right as we could. We need to create a premium pen display story which serves the shopping needs of newsagency customers more effectively without overburdening the sales team.
While what we have now would be considered best practice based on what I see in newsagencies around the country, I know from the Sophie experience that we are losing sales in the newsagency because of the conflict between the needs of a premium open customer and the bread and butter traffic customers in our newsagency. People would see that we’re busy and walk away. The only way to address that now is to have a spare person full time on the floor, loose. Frankly we are not big enough to justify that expense.