Reuters has a report about the latest innovation in Japan in the development of e-paper, technology newspaper publishers have money in because o the opportunity for providing a reloadable portable platform almost as convenient as paper. Watch the Reuters video and see how it works – there is an ad at the front of the video, ignore that.
As I blogged a few days ago we did not receive Take 5 stock on Wednesday. While replacement stock arrived late that day, the damage was done as the photo which I took yesterday shows.
We sell around 75% of our Take 5 copies on the on sale day. Even being without stock for two thirds of a day can hurt our figures for the week. If I had accepted what the Network Services call centre operator first advised, I would not have received replacement stock until Friday.
Magazine distributors need to take more attention of the magazine sales decay curve for weeklies in newsagencies. Doing so will help them better understand the high cost of missed deliveries and, hopefully, encourage them to be more proactive at rectifying the situation.
We are promoting Australian Women’s Weekly at our counter this weekend – buy the magazine and get a free Darrell Lea chocolate bar. We’re funding this ourselves to promote the title as well as the Darrell Lea range.  While we have some some through the promotion, it’s not setting our customers on fire.
My blog post yesterday about helping independent magazines has struck a chord, several independent publishers have made contact to talk about how they can engage more directly with newsagents to promote their product. I’d expect to see more valuable and direct relationships to evolve outside the traditional magazine supply channel. Publishers delivering more than a 25% share of magazine cover price will focus the minds of newsagents on their product above others.
The State and Federal governments missed an opportunity to lead yesterday by not reaching agreement on the plastic shopping bag issue. As I blogged here a month ago, many consumers prefer plastic bags. This is why most retailers don’t levy a charge. Government action makes enforcement easier. While I am not keen on regulation, the only way to dramatically reduce plastic bag usage is through leadership from government.
In a world first, Relay, a French magazine distributor is offering customers download access to 400 digital magazines. The cost is just 17.90 Euros a month. Under indivdual pricing, this would usually only buy access to four or five titles.
This amazing all-you-can-read magazine subscription offer underscores the cost effectiveness for publishers and distributors of the digital magazine model. The news coverage (PC World, CIO to name two) will lure plenty of consumers to the world of digital magazines.
Consumers have access to mainstream titles as well as plenty of special interest titles. There is no lmit to how many titles they download in a month. The only restriction is two downloads per title in a month.
There’s no limit on how many different magazines subscribers can download, although they can only download two copies of any given issue.
The key pitch of the offer is the environment. This is underscored by the relationship relay has with World Wide Fund for Nature – they receive a donation for every monthly subscription and in return promote the offer as good for the environment.
Print magazine publishers who produce digital editions will tell us that the online subscriber is different to the over the counter subscriber. While I think that is true for some, it is not true for all. As digital grows we will lose print sales.
This needs to be on the minds of newsagents as they plan the next generation of magazine fixtures and newsagency floor layout.
From a publisher’s perspective, digital is attractive. With dramatically lower supply chain costs, no shrinkage and no return costs, the only real challenge for a digital only title is ho to find your consumers. What relay is doing is doing in France demonstrates to publishers the role a smart magazine distributor can play.
We need to watch and understand this space as it evolves.
We are trying some new products for Mother’s Day this year. In addition to Darrel Lea (the Mum’s Bag is a good seller!) and social stationery we have a range of small gift packs, some mugs and other items.
We have also changed our approach to display – located it closer to our greeting card offer – all visible from our main window – as the photo of part of our range shows.
We have had the display out for two weeks and it’s drawing good results.
We refresh the display weekly, moving products around, changing the focus of the offer – this is important since newsagencies have so many regulars that they become store-blind.
Apropos of nothing really, how about this amazing wireless portable baseball scoreboard, SportsCast.
In sports mad Australia an AFL or NRL version of SportsCast would work a treat I am sure.
It’s something I’d like to sell in my newsagencies. In the US it is sold through the Brookstone stores and wesite.
Bernard Zimmermann, Director of POS Solutions, has claimed on his company blog today that our work on eziPass is not being done for free. Bernard has knowingly published false and misleading information. While I’d rather ignore this, I have to make it clear that eziPass is free.
My software company, Tower Systems, has developed eziPass and borne all costs. We make no commission, rebate or any benefit from transactions on eziPass. We receive no compensation from sign up. Nothing. Bernard knows this. He and I have personally discussed it.
What Bernard has published today is disappointing and will confuse some. I guess that he has done this because it’s the only way he can try and pull focus from eziPass.
Plenty of POS Solutions users are about to start using eziPass, it is available for all newsagents and is free.
UPDATE (5:19PM) Bernard has posted more on his blog this afternoon about this. True to form, it is inaccurate. Bernard is not banned from this blog, no one is. Any comment he posts here is published without change.
I receive more calls and emails from independent publishers in response to this blog than any other single group. I’m grateful for the contact, it has made me aware of challenges they face which I had never considered. The discussions are usually robust and, helpulf for them as well.
The challenge is how we help independent publishers find a market for their titles. They don’t have the financial resources to invest in marketing collateral like we receive from Pacific or ACP. They are not big enough to have a contract which requires their share of the best real-estate in our shops. Their distributor relationships rarely go beyond a logistics function.
Independent titles represent a key point of difference for newsagencies. We need them as much as they need us for the moment if we are to fully service the niche / special interest marketplace.
So, how do we help independent magazine publishers? Here are some suggestions for independent publishers:
Here are my suggestions for newsagents:
These are just some thoughts on how we can embrace independent magazines in newsagencies. While we can’t retire on the gains, we can reinforce a point of difference and thereby extend the relevance of our newsagencies.
National Dog is now coming in a plastic bag – the kind used for porn magazines and others with free gifts. The bag of shame some of us call it. National Dog is not porn (at least I don’t think it is) and there are no free gifts so why the bag? Who knows? Okay, this is not an earth shattering issue, but in a shop built for browsers it’s frustrating.
The photo shows our latest use of a cardboard magazine fixture we received late last year. Shop Til You Drop from ACP Magazines is the latest title to benefit from our reincarnation project. We love this little cardboard unit because we can use it anywhere – right now it’s in the middle of the dance floor, every customer sees it as they enter the shop. This is the perfect place to promote Shop Til You Drop.
Since it’s not a power end, however, the publisher won’t see this as a valuable display in terms of how we’re measured. All that matters to us is sales and this stand will work a treat. If only newsagents were treated us an business people and rewarded for results.
Fortis Clearing announced to the ASX today a substantial shareholding in Bill Express. They have 49 million shares or 12.3% of Bill Express. This was a non-cash transaction – the shares were acquired “under the terms of existing stock borrowing agreement”. This from a Fortis ad on CareerOne:
Fortis Clearing Sydney Pty Limited is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Fortis Bank SA/NV, a global banking group incorporated in Belgium and the Netherlands. Fortis Clearing Sydney generates the majority of its revenue from the provision of third party clearing services to the financial services industry. The company operates predominantly in Australia, and employs approximately 36 staff across its operations.
It will be interesting to see if this changes things for newsagents. Today has seen plenty of movement – groups of newsagents organising to get together to fight against Bill Express, more newsagents lodging complaints with various statutory authorities and all through this silence from Bill Express back to newsagents who have contacted them.
I’ve been in New Zealand today and had an opportunity to see a variety of retail situations.  What interested me is that the businesses selling stationery carry less of the rats and mice products than Australian newsagents. While there is a risk in reducing range, I’d suggest that they have done this here for sound economic reasons.
We need to look carefully at how our stationery offer is shopped and what it being sought.  While being the stationery retailer of last resort has some emotional appeal it’s not enough to build a business future around. I suspect this is that New Zealand retailers in the stationery space have found.
The announcement by Bill Express to the Australian Stock Exchange yesterday does not, in my view, fully inform the market. Investors have not been told of the tsunami of anger the changes announced by Bill Express has unleashed by newsagents against the company.
To my mind, Bill Express ought to inform the market that:
Some reading my posts about Bill Express will think that I’m enjoying the mess they are making on their relationship with newsagents because of my involvement with eziPass, the alternative to Bill Express. I am not. Until a few weeks ago I and my team at Tower Systems were actively working with Bill Express in an effort to ensure a viable relationship between their offer and newsagents.
Indeed, for the last four years we have worked closely with Bill Express, seeking to bring to newsagent point of sale systems facilities which cut the time it takes to pay bills and process electronic vouchers. Bill Express only progressed these projects when it suited them and not when it suited newsagents.
They have botched their relationship with newsagents and which I understand the commercial focus of the changes announced this week, Bill Express has only taken this step because it suits them. This is not about newsagents at all.
If the market was more fully informed about Bill Express behaviour against newsagents over the last few months I’d expect their share price to be lower than its is today.
A key part of each of the Sophie Randall stores we create is our wall of feature cards. Each card is displayed full face – we have at least 350 designs on display in this feature space. This is in addition to our more traditional fixturing for every day and other cards from our more mainstream card suppliers.
While getting space for a feature wall of cards would be a challenge in a traditional newsagency, it is worth looking at if you do have the space and are in a location where you can own the card category. As the photo below shows, the wall looks impressive when well stocked:
This photo shows less than half the wall of cards.
We only put unique cards in the wall, the kind of cards card lovers are happy to buy for their collection or for sometime in the future. These customers are the best!
I heard a bit of a ruckus when in our Frankston store yesterday morning. A young guy had been caught by one of our team members stealing a marker, the kind used for graffiti. Sheri swung into action, grabbed the marker and told the criminal he was banned. No mucking around, swift and unilateral justice. I was pleased to see this – it’s the only way to deal with someone caught stealing a marker. The public humiliation meted out yesterday is worth more anything a police report could bring.
OzLotto jackpotting to $30 million next Tuesday is a wonderful fillip for newsagents. who sell lottery products. The traffic boost gives us an opportunity to leverage sales through the business. We’re investing in dressing the store for the event and hoping it jackpots again. We’re refreshing our counter offers to ensure that even those who don’t browse beyond the lottery counter can boost other sales.
In our two newsagencies without lotteries we are refreshing our offer out of respect for the increased retail traffic primed by the jackpot.
We didn’t receive Take 5 today. After spending too long waiting on the phone to the distributor they suggested we would get replacement stock on Friday. I explained this is no good because we sell 75% of our stock today. After robustly making my case and waiting some more they said they would see what they could do. They came through for us – Take 5 just arrived. If only this could have been handled without all the time spent getting the matter escalated. This is a retail business. No stock = no sales.
We moved the ACP basket builder magazine stand in our newsXpress Forest Hill location on the weekend – away from the front of the shop and down next to our busiest counter.
While there is nothing much in the move, too often in newsagencies we have a set and forget approach to fixtures like the ACP basket builder. Regular customers get as store blind as us and the promotional stand soon loses its value of the business.
By moving it we have revived interest and boosted the value of the stand. The move is part of the regular cycle of change in the shop, a cycle which keeps us fresh and helps drive good sales.
The only downside of the move is that sometimes the police from ACP will not be happy with the location. My answer to that would be that daylight loses it’s appeal if that is all you get.
The new Winter Favourites cookbook from ACP feels more like a magazine than a cookbook. It’s a departure from the other cookbooks in the succesful ACP line.
Given the look and feel of Winter Favourites we are promoting it as a magazine. The display in the photo is a couple of days old and is already generating good sales.
As I’ve said here recently, our goal is to sell through as much of a title as we can in the first few weeks – before having to pay for the stock.
Howard Owens has an excellent blog post on information ethics in the context of blogging (among other things). His words are an excellent reminder to all bloggers and those who comment on blog posts. Here is part of what Howard wrote:
The information ethic begins with each person who both understands the power of information and the scourge of misinformation.
This is a role not solely for journalists, but journalists as the paid purveyors of information must not slip in adherence to high ethical standard (the ethical burden on journalists has never been greater); this is not a role not solely for bloggers, but bloggers as the vanguard of a new information river, must take on the burden of protecting and cherishing information; mostly, this is a role for all participants in the conversation, both the creators and the followers.
Not all participants will rise to the occasion, increasing the burden on those of use who recognize the responsibility.
The information ethic requires that we strive always for honesty, transparency, accuracy and fairness.
Howard is right about the role of bloggers and our obligation to protect and cherish information. While in this place I’m occasionally engaged in competitive positioning, I accept the commitment to honesty, transparency, accuracy and fairness.
eziPass provides access to a bunch of phone cards newsagents cannot access through the Dialtime terminal. These include: Aussie Phonecard, Bubble, ChatMore, ChitChat, DoDo, Double Happiness, Go Bananas, GPS, Hello, Hello China, joy, Minute Max, Pay Peanuts, Phone Me, Savvytel, Stealth and Time.
With over 400 newsagents now on the eziPass platform, we’re helping the companies behind these calling cards re-energise their marketing which should further drive sales for newsagents.
Ben Tennyson, Ben 10, features on four magazine covers in-store right now: Kraze Club, K-Zone, D Mag and Disney Adventures.
Ben 10 is a character in a Cartoon Network TV show. There is a Wikipedia page dedicated to the character and over 4 million website references and 600,000 blog post references.
While chasing down this information may seem obsessive to some, it helps us understand what we sell – we know more about the demographic, what they are interested in and that we can put four titles together in a feature display which might otherwise not happen.
Best of all is the Kids Birthday Parties blog which has ideas for Ben 10 themed birthday parties. While Coles, Safeway and others may sell one or two of the magazines with Ben 10 on the cover, they will not go the extra step and have information about kids parties and the like. This is where we can demonstrate our point of difference – leveraging product knowledge to add genuine value of shopping in a newsagency.
Reading some of the material online about Ben 10, it struck me that too often we focus on single titles because that is what publishers want. Sometimes, a more holistic approach is better for our business. This is the case with Ben 10 themed product in newsagencies this week.
I am grateful to Jane at Forest Hill for showing me the four covers and the opportunity we have.
