Following a question from a colleague newsagent in NSW about retail trade in November, I’ve decided to gather and analyse newsagent sales data for November from as wide a pool of newsagents as possible.
Participation is open to any newsagent. The 1,450 using Tower Systems software can participate by providing a report outlines below and others can participate by using a spreadsheet template I am happy to provide.
For Tower newsagents I would like a Monthly Sales Comparison report: tick the box (lower left corner) to exclude home deliveries, set your first date range (on the left) to November 1, 2007 to November 30, 2007 and the date range of the right to November 1, 2006 to November 30, 2006.
Once you have the report on the screen, click the PDF button to save this as a PDF. They go into your email software and send a copy of the PDF to me at mark@towersystems.com.au.
I am focusing my attention on the core pillars of our newsagency businesses: newspapers, magazines, greeting cards, stationery and, if you have them, lottery products. For some, it is about unit sales and for others it is about revenue.
If you have switched your newsagency to the MPA magazine categories, and I hope you have, I’d like a second report, the Monthly Sales Comparison again, but this time only for the magazine department and with the category analysis ticked (lower right corner). This will facilitate category level analysis of the magazine department and allow even deeper analysis.
I will keep all detailed responses confidential but will report overall results back to the participants. I’ll also post a summary here. It is possible this will lead to a series of round table business discussions early in the new year – we can learn plenty from benchmarking current sales data and discussing the businesses performing well in such a study.
For Tower Newsagents I can dig deeper with other reports and to ensure consistency in reporting. Non Tower Newsagents should email me on mark[at]towersystems.com.au for the spreadsheet template – the more participating the better.
I have looked at reports already for several newsagencies and the differences for November are illuminating.