A blog on issues affecting Australia's newsagents, media and small business generally. More ...

Month: January 2009

A happy space in a newsagency

positive_prod.JPGThese postcards make customers happy – when they browse and when they purchase.  Their positive message is infectious to people open to feeling happy.  They are part of a range we have from Compendium.  In several of our stores are have a happy space where everything is about nurturing happiness.  We have not signed the space or made it obvious in any way other than through the placement of products.  The products are popular.  They are purchased on their own and as a small gift to go with a greeting card.  Besides the postcards, there are booklets, books, cards and trinkets.  Besides being happy with the sales, this part of the shop is good to visit as the products inspire as well as the customer who browse them.

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Customer Service

Amazing boxed card sales results

dsc05822.JPGI am thrilled with the strong sales for boxed Christmas cards eight days after Christmas in our post Christmas sale.  The best sale yesterday was one hundred and twenty five packs of a specific design of boxed cards to a single customer.  We pulled these in from three of our shops. 

In each of our centres we are the only outlets with a good range of boxed Christmas cards left.  Word of mouth is driving good traffic to us – we know because customers tell us.  In one case, where regular traffic is not so hot, the cards are finding new customers for us.  Our average daily sale of boxed Christmas cards in each location is in excess of $700.00. 

We sourced this boxed card product specifically for the sale.   Our margin is 60%. 

The boxed cards are the hero product.  Customers drawn into buy boxed cards also purchase calendars, magazines, lottery tickets and newspapers.  Not every time but enough to make us happy.  We know because we have watched these customers – not those in buying a magazine or a newspaper but those walking past who see the display, come in and browse, pick up several boxes and then browse the shop.

This is a great seasonal opportunity for newsagents – the planning for which starts in February.

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Greeting Cards

Promoting Girlfriend at the counter

fhn_girlfriend_jan09.JPGDespite receiving no marketing collateral, we are promoting the latest issue of Girlfriend magazine at the counter given the number of gifts which come with the latest issue.  The display has been up since Wednesday.  It is good to move away from Christmas at the counter. 

We are committed to continuing to use this counter space to promote titles with we consider to be an easy impulse purchase.

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magazines

Joe Hockey is wrong about newsagents

Newsagents and pharmacists are two forever-protected species as far as the coalition is concerned. 

This is a quote attributed to Joe Hockey, the former Minister for Small Business in the Howard Government.  It’s on Page 12 of the Perspective insert in the Australian Financial Review (Dec 30 – Jan 4).

Joe Hockey and his colleagues demonstrated their commitment to newsagents through their years in office by:

  1. Facilitating the elimination of exclusive newspaper and magazine distribution territories without compensation for taking away from newsagents this century-old right.
  2. Driving newsagents to enter into new contracts with publishers and permitting this to be done by newsagents negotiating on their own behalf and not using professional negotiators.
  3. Allowing poor leadership of newsagents at the time to wipe off more than $100 million dollars of value of newsagent businesses without compensation.
  4. Permitting a contract relationship for newspapers and magazines which deregulated one side of the transaction and left newsagents with an expensive and inefficient system which was designed for a regulated marketplace.
  5. Permitting the 865 Government owned Australia Post retail outlets to become more and more like newsagents, moving into areas traditionally serviced well by newsagents.
  6. Refusing to intervene in 2004 when Australia Post was engaged in what I’d consider grossly unconscionable practices when newsagents tried to establish an alternative bill payment network.
  7. Refusing to respond to newsagent representations in 2004 about an unfair magazine distribution system which operates at a loss for many newsagents.

Joe Hockey is wrong about newsagents.  The Coalition has not demonstrated any concern for newsagents other than hollow words.

That said, we owe our poor handling of deregulation to the two or three newsagents who ran this project on behalf of newsagents.  They were not up to the task.  The cost of their failure will be felt for years to come.

Footnote: This blog post is not a call for regulation.  We needed to move away from the protection of what we had until 1999.  However, what we do need is complete deregulation – fair commercial terms around the distribution of newspapers and magazines. 

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magazine distribution

Kansas newspaper to stop print edition

The Kansas City Kansan, the only newspaper exclusively devoted to covering Kansas City and Wyandotte County in the US will cease publishing a print edition from January 10, moving to a pure online model.  Read their announcement here. 

While this is a small town story from the US, the drivers of the decision by the publisher exist worldwide.  Smart newsagents are prepared.  They are doing this by balancing their business, not relying on one category as much as before and modifying their shop fit to facilitate change.

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Media disruption

Assaulted by a customer

Jason, the Manager of our newsXpress Forest Hill store was bitten by a customer yesterday.  The customer was trying to retrieve two credit cards he handed over for a transaction.  Jason suspected, based on a call from our bank’s fraud department on Monday, that one of the cards was stolen.  The customer became agitated and got behind the counter while Jason was on the phone to be bank.  In the ensuing altercation, the customer bit Jason and escaped.  The Police came can and gathered evidence of the assault.

This all started with a transaction on December 26 for which a customer used a stolen credit card to transfer money to a prepaid card.  Since it went through the bank we did not know of a problem at the time.  One the same day a similar transaction using the same card was done at our Frankston newsagency.  The bank called us Monday and from then we were on alert. 

Yesterday, when an identical transaction was presented at Forest Hill, Jason stepped in.  His role as Manager of the business does not require him to be physically attacked by customers like this.  The Doctor treated the wound and gave Jason  a tetanus shot, it will be three months before he knows if the bite introduced any infection.

We have tightened prepaid Visa card loading transactions and now will only take money from another card if the customer has the PIN number.  While the bank does not require this we feel it is an appropriate precaution.

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Customer Service
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