What is the point of sending a poster to be displayed with newspapers if it does not connect with the news? None, I say. This poster sent with The Age today is a waste or paper and would be a waste of my retail real-estate.. We are not displaying it. We are using the space, instead, for a poster for The Australian which connects with the news of the day.
This poster from The Age is lazy.
We took the opportunity this morning to promote the weekly magazines to the new customers we will see today. Being a public holiday, more than half our customers will not be regulars so we try and make every opportunity work. The display in the photo is what customers pass on the way to our main lottery counter. Woman’s Day and New Idea and other weeklies ought to drive good easy add-on business.
Regulars here will see that we change this and other key magazine displays two and three times a week. I think it’s what we have to do in retail. Customers become as store blind as we do from the other side of the counter.
French President, Nicolas Sarkozy announced a 600 Euro emergency aid package for French newspapers on friday which included a free one year newspaper subscription for every eighteen year old – to get them reading the newspaper. A report in The Guardian quotes Sarkozy:
“The habit of reading a daily paper takes root at a very young age.”
While I’d like the commercial benefit of enforced newspaper supply to eighteen year olds, it makes no sense. I’d be against the Australian Government financially supporting the newspaper subscription model because it is a model which is unfair on newsagents and because the government support would only benefit the publishers.
I would prefer to see more government support for an efficient and open channel for access to reliable news and information. Here in Australia that means a reliable broadband network and support for professional, independent, journalism.
Stop the Presses is a film which looks at the dramatic change going on inside newsrooms and around newspapers in the United States. Go to the Stop the Presses website and watch the introductory video. It is a sobering reminder even here in Australia and so far away from the US that this channel of ours, regardless of its long and proud history, is changing and that, therefore, our businesses must change.
In today’s patchy magazine marketplace, magazines about old things seem to be doing well – from the data I see at least. Old motorbikes, old trains, old cars, old homes, old trucks. The magazines I have notcied are pitched around the Classic or Vintage or Period theme. These titles attract loyal customers as shoppers and browsers. While there is not much cross over between the segments, I am contemplating a feature display of the classic titles to try and attract mroe customers – since we know from sales they are out there.
Just knowing that the Classic / Vintage / Period interest is so strong in this marketplace is good to help drive decisions.
U.S. News, the US news magazine which competers with Time and Newsweek switched from weely to biweekly and then monthly. Now, U.S. News is launching a weekly digital edition. The editor sees this as a good move:
The upside for the readers, he notes, is that they’re only paying for content — and not for the expense of shipping and printing.
Portfolio has more on this.
The bad news just keeps on coming for the print publishing business with word that Disney Publishing Worldwide has closed Wondertime, its fledging parenting magazine. Disney cited the challenged economic climate in its decision.
Meadiweek has more on this at their website. There is no news on the future of the Australian edition published by ACP Magazines. I know I bang on about this but it’s important – newsagents need magazine fixturing which will allow their businesses to evolve as magazines go through a transitional phase. I can’t see any reason for a shopfitter to build magazine fixturing in this marketplace.
The Sydney Morning Herald today (curiously in the business section) is promoting the availability of a t-shirt with a reproduction of the front page of the SMH issue covering the Obama inauguration.
The SMH website has more Obama themed products for sale.
It is the newspaper front page being reproduced on a t-shirt which I find fascinating.
I have been involved discussions this week with magazine distribution stakeholders in two overseas countries about magazine supply and related IT standards. The discussions are providing an excellent insight into how others operate in this space which is complex and frustrating for newsagents here. In one case they are showing what is possible and in another they are showing what to avoid.
I am surprised at the lack of cross border dialogue between newsagent representatives on these topics. With newsagent associations working on a code of conduct at the present with magazine distributors, I would have thought that cross border research would be on the agenda.
There is no outcome yet, just good shared information which is helping to guide strategies in a couple of areas.
Bernard Zimmermann one of the owners of POS Solutions has slammed a newsagent software company for announcing a significant increase in software support fees. I agree with Bernard. Software support coverage should be priced fairly. This is one reason the 1,500 Tower Systems newsagents are not being hit with the price increases being applied by whichever company Bernard blogs about.
MAD magazine, one of the first magazines I recall truly engaging with (the fold-in back cover was a laugh every time), is going quarterly according to reports out of the US.
We created a display promoting the Take 5 Australia Day issue at the counter yesterday. This is a risk for us because most of our Take 5 sales occur on Wednesday and Thursday – we are going against this trend.
The free Australian flag pin which comes with the magazine qualified Take 5 for this prime space. We saw a lift yesterday. The real sales test will be this weekend.
It is surprising what people want to buy sometimes. take the stand in the photo. We used several of these to display Christmas product. In one of our stores we sold three of these stands after Christmas to very happy customers. Not that we have them on display – these customers ordered the stands during Christmas selling. We were happy to sell the stands since the products they were used for will come next year with more stands (if we carry these items).
Valentine’s Day is a short yet intensive season for Australian newsagents and retailers more generally. Making the most of the season means planning a multi-faceted attack well in advance. Here are some left-field marketing tips you could consider to supplement the traditional approach around greeting cards, plush and chocolates. It is not too late to engage and pushthe boundaries this Valentine’s Day:
There are plenty of other ideas. Keep thinking. The keys are to have fun, engage with your customers and be unique.
Click here to see the tips I published last year.
And the pigs? They are part of the Valentine’s Day range we have for our Sophie Randall businesses. They are different and something different is what gift customers like to find.
I have been contacted by several newagents about my post on Tuesday about funky looking back to school stationery. The Spencer Burford range is proving to be very popular with primary and secondary students. It is well priced and gives newsagents carrying it point of difference over many others in this back to school space. Newsagents have tended to approach stationery in a conservative way. This product breaks with that tradition and makes is seem ‘with it’ and connected to today’s BTS consumer – a crucial challenge in retail, today especially.
Optus is the stand out brand in the mobile recharge business in our newsagencies. In one of our stores it accounts for more than 40% of all recharge product sold – twenty five vouchers last week.
I am tracking this because this is the business we lost for a time when Bill Express and related businesses collapsed last year. Optus recharge is an important traffic generator.
Some newsagencies I see are still winning lost customers back, others have passed previous numbers. Optus is the key. It is a brand consumers know and trust.
Several newsagents I have spoken with over the last few days tell me that Valentine’s Day card sales are good even though the big day is three weeks away. I prefer to go out early with seasons like Valentine’s Day because it shows customers who like to browse that you have the range.
The challenge is to balance seasonal space allocation such that it does not distract from regular card sales.
Newsagents received an Off-Sale Date and Return Method Changes Notification from Network Services last week. This is the first of what we expect to be many. The newsagents operating according to industry standards did not have to do any extra work. Newsagents not following industry standards or not using compliant software have had to engage in manual processes to deal with the three pages of magazine return changes notified by Network Services.
These change notifications are coming through weekly as Network Services moves to its weekly returns model.
To newsagents who wonder about the value of up to date industry-standard software, the time saved for many in handling these Network Services notifications is the answer.
There are several battles being waged at present around which businesses can get direct supply of magazines. I know of newsagencies selling more than $8,000 in magazines a week which are being denied direct supply access while a small supermarket nearby selling considerably less is given a direct account without challenge.
There are some who would say that the distribution newsagent must be protected. These same people do not fight when a new supermarket or convenience outlet opens and gets a direct account – because newsagents lost that fight years ago. They only fight when a newsagent (subagent to them) wants to go direct. They do this because the magazine distributors will probably agree with them – the individual newsagent wanting a direect account is not as powerful as, say, IGA, Coles or Woolworths.
In situations of which I am aware right now, goot retail newsagents are being blocked from accessing direct supply of magazines. This will encourage them to reduce focus on magazines. Publishers will be the losers. I wonder if they know how magazine distributors are managing the representation of their product in the changing newsagency channel.
I agree it would be difficult to let go of revenue, especially from a business you have helped grow. However, competition policy is on the side of the consumer.
Behaviour I have seen recently shows that some playing in this area do not understand competition law.
I was surprised to learn that there are newsagents who continue to process magazines at the end of the week (for weekly returns) or at the end of the month (for monthly returns). In our newsagencies we scan the magazines as they come off each Monday, Wednesday and Friday. We do this regardless of whether we have the electronic returns file from the distributor – the software will allocate to the right form once it has been received even after we have scanned the titles.
This approach of scanning magazine returns daily saves considerable time and space.
A newsagent I know who made the switch to the daily returns approach last year, after changing software, is saving at least eight paid hours of labour a month – $152 a month or $1,824 a year – plus on-costs.
I cringe when I see stacks of loose magazines in the back room of a newsagency. This is like leaving cash for anyone to pick up or saleable stock to go missing. I prefer to see tied or strapped bundles of magazines which have been scanned – ready for collection and return.
Too often, software companies fail to train newsagents on proper processes around tasks like magazine returns. This is where the Tower Systems online Magazine Management training works – it is being run by someone who managed this in his own newsagency for years.
The Guardian reports that the World Association of Newspapers has ‘postponed’ its annual conference due for March this year in India. Good on them for having the guts to make such a decision. Conferences just for the sake of them are a drain on sponsors.
We are promoting Take 5, That’s Life and New Idea out the front of our newsagency. They all prominently feature an Australia Day connection. On either side we have maps of Melbourne and Victoria – getting out and about and seeing part of Australia is behind Jason’s idea here. We pulled the flags off the Internet and created the display in around ten minutes.
The display looks more effective in real life than the photo. We are confident it will generate good results for us.
We stayed away from balloons because we have those for the OzLotto$20 million jackpot next week and for our Valentine’s Day window.
What I like about this display is that it promotes titles from more than one publisher. Too often we get caught up in single title or single publisher displays and this does not help our business as much as it helps the publisher.
We have placed copies of the new issue of Australian Women’s Weekly with Barack and Michelle Obama on the cover in front of our newspaper stand today. With the inauguration front page news today the placement makes sense – AWW ties in perfectly.
We will leave this small display in place until the weekend, longer if the sales are there.
The stand is a recycled unit we had in the back room. What the photo does not quite show is that the stand holds ten copies of Women’s Weekly.
I am working with a group of retailers in a country which is behind Australian standards in the handling of magazines. While here in Australia we are able to handle arrival of invoices and document unsold stock electronically and quickly, the group I am working with lives in a completely manual world – manual pricing of magazines, paper based invoices, paper based returns forms and paper based requests for additional stock.
This manual world condemns retailers to a higher labour cost and restrains them from being able to provide good customer service. It hurts publishers because of lack of sales data.
While I think the Australian magazine distribution system is in urgent need of overhaul, my recent exposure to worse practices overseas is a reminder of how far we have come in recent years.
There is good interest in the 5 WAYS TO KICK START YOUR NEWSAGENCY workshop planned for early February. This is a two hour workshop packed with business building ideas. The workshop will run in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth and Canberra. It is free to attend. I promise a valuable session packed with good business ideas. The session will concentrate on opportunities available for optomistic and focused newsagents in 2009. While I will continue to document challenges here, I see a tremendous opportunity to leverage these for a bighter future. Click here to download the flyer with dates and booking details or book online.