We released our latest newsagent sales benchmark report this morning. This report is the result of thorough analysis of year on year same store sales data from 63 newsagencies with accurate, supplier compliant, data. The benchmark report and associated dataset provides the most current and comprehensive dataset against which newsagents can compare their businesses. Here are the headlines from the report:
- Overall retail sales in newsagencies up, on average, 2%.
- Newspaper sales fell 4.8% in the city and 2.3% in the country.
- Magazine sales fell 4.5% in the city and rose 2.2% in the country.
- Card sales increased 3.3% in the city and 2.3% in the country.
- Stationery sales fell by 7.8% in the city, and 2% in the country.
The benchmark study, the fourth over the last year and most comprehensive conducted by Tower Systems, provides more evidence of consumers migrating from the newsagency channel and migrating from traditional paper based news and information sources to online.
The study also grouped newsagencies by size of magazine sales. In this analysis of newsagencies with $200,000 a year in magazine sales and higher, the year on year results showed the top performing store achieving magazine unit sales growth of 5% and the bottom performing store achieving a decline of 7%.
In the group of newsagencies with less than $200,000 in sales, the range was between 12% growth and 8% decline.
Over the next week or so I will outline how I think we can react to some of these challenges. Knowing how we are performing is half the battle to navigating a better future.
Undertaking these benchmark studies is is a free service we have offered through Tower Systems for close to eight years.