With most Australians $900 better off this month thanks to the hand out from the Federal Government, I am surprised that newspaper publishers have not pitched a stimulus bonus subscription offer. They could have easily and cheaply promoted an offer which chased some of the $900. A well pitched offer would have helped their businesses as well as thousands of small business newsagencies. Perfect use of the stimulus payment I’d say.
The treatment of newsagents by News magazines over Alpha magazine is, in my view appalling. We built this title on a promise of partnership with a significant financial carrot as our return. News magazines has taken that carrot away and handed the title to NDD, a magazine distributor with a less than clean track record for equitable supply of magazines and with a history of refusing to cut titles – that it my experience at least.
So, here we are, shafted. My question for newsagents is what are we doing about this in our businesses? Are newsagents writing to NDD to cancel the title and copying the correspondence to News Magazines? Are we complaining here and in other places but putting Alpha on the shelves as usual and thereby saying to suppliers that it is okay to whack us again and again? Or, are we doing nothing? Traditionally, newsagents have done nothing when suppliers have changed commercial arrangements to the detriment of newsagents.
One day, newsagents will stand up for themselves. I wonder if that day is now.
Mother’s Day is the second biggest season for greeting cards on the newsagent seasonal calendar. It is beaten only by Christmas and is around 50% ahead of Valentine’s Day. While card sales equal only 20% of Christmas, is a very important season, generating considerable additional traffic in newsagencies.
Like most newsagents, we are pursuing every opportunity to maximise sales. We have had our Mother’s Day gifts in display for several weeks. The photo shows only part of our range. Going out early with key seasons like Mother’s Day, Valentine’s Day, Father’s Day is an important strategy. It shows off our range to browsers and provides a selling opportunity for those who like to get in early.
We grew Mother’s Day card sales by 22% in 2008 over 2007. We are chasing double digit growth this year.
Rather than wait for marketing collateral, we went out early yesterday with an Australian Women’s Weekly display in the mall in front of our shop. Given that our competitors are Coles, Safeway and Big W, it makes sense that we go hard early in the on-sale for this title. AWW is achieving good success this year and we expect that to continue with this issue. I just wish we received a good range of collateral material with the magazine.
The Tully Times has got behind the stimulus campaign which I promoted here and reproduced the poster in their newspaper this week. It’s good to see the poster getting used. Newsagents are encouraging other retailers nearby to put it in their windows. I am happy for it to be used anywhere to promote local businesses.
There is plenty of gloomy news out of the US overnight which relates to categories important to Australian newsagencies.
US stationery retailer Office Depot reported a sales drop of 18% last quarter. The Wall Street Journal says this is due, in part, to newcomers in the stationery field. Most newsagents reported a drop in stationery sales in the last quarter based on my sales benchmark study. Those achieving growth produced excellent numbers. Newsagents ought to be growing in stationery in the marketplace as consumers pull back on their visits to the bigger outlets where they know they will buy more. The WSJ article is interesting in this regard.
American Greetings (owner of John Sands) reported a 14% fall in sales for the quarter. The tough US conditions are making people think twice about card purchases according to a Forbes. Cards are another tough category. Some newsagents do very well with cards while others are experiencing poor results. The key appears to be direct engagement. Newsagent who ‘own’ their card department are more likely to produce better results based on the data I am seeing. Our small businesses are more able to respond to conditions than the nationals.
Time Warner has reported a sharper decline in magazine advertising revenue than forecast. We are seeing this here. There was mention in the Australian Financial Review yesterday of this impacting PMP results. If advertising revenue continues to fall through the year we will feel an impact in newsagencies on several fronts.
While these reports read like bad news. They ought to encourage us to exert more control over our businesses, to be more versatile and be on the move. I am meeting more newsagents bucking the trend and producing good results be refusing to let stuff happen around them. They are cutting their own path, taking risks and, often, enjoying good success. For example, one newsagent cut 30% of magazine space and increased overall magazine sales. Another went from three card companies to one and increased sales. Another got on his bike and chased stationery business outside his four walls and trebled stationery sales in six months.
We are promoting Better Homes and Gardens at the counter from today. The enhancements to the magazine and its popularity early in the on-sale period make the investment of space sensible for us. In addition to this prime counter location, we have Better Homes and Gardens in its usual location and in a couple of pockets above our weekly magazines.
We have been testing a new line of greeting cards at our newsagencies and our Sophie Randall businesses.
The I told you so range was conceived and written by Jason Schwarten, manager of our newsXpress Forest Hill store. The original artwork is by Vienna Chen, our graphic designer at Tower Systems. The cards are published under the Sophie Randall brand. The project has been project managed by Tower Systems Marketing Manager Andrew Halpern.
It has been interesting navigating the development and release of the new card line. We have a deeper appreciation of the work of greeting card publishers as a result.
While it is very early days for the I told you so line, we are encouraged by customer interaction – it seems that most people can think of at least one occasion when they would like to have been able to send an I told you so card.
Customers are enjoying the range – one customer at our Melbourne Central location bought one of each design and assured us she will be back because she regularly needs to tell her friends I told you so. Others browse, laugh and comment – the I told you so range evokes a good response!
US newspaper circulation fell 7% on a year on year basis. PaidContent) has more on this grim story. While there is a considerable difference in the US and Australian marketplaces in terms of newspapers, the factors impacting newspapers in the US will impact us here but to what extent is unknown. Publishers show they know this by their distribution and marketing initiatives. We need to balance our newsagency businesses so we rely less on newspapers for traffic and revenue.
On April 22 at the Tower Blog I wrote about the value of professional magazine labels. For years at Tower we have recommended laser labels to newsagents but also supported thermal labels printed in a single strip on the Blaster and other printers. We encourage newsagents to choose what is right for their needs.
Yesterday, POS Solutions blogged that they now have laser labels too. It is good they are now offering a choice.
Professional magazine labels help you save time in managing magazines. Certainly this is my experience. Just about every Monday, Wednesday and Friday when handling new magazine stock and looking for what is due to be returned, the label is the best guide for shop-floor decisions.
The difference between Tower and POS for the last twenty years on labels is, in my view, one functional reason why the Tower newsagent community is three times the size of the POS newsagent community.
Check out how to use the Safari browser to read digital editions of magazines withough paying for a subscription. I am publishing this information here to bring attention to the hack so it may be shutdown.
Portfolio magazine was closed this week. Condé Nast closed the title two years after launch and close to US$100 million invested. Jeff Jarvis asks the big question, whether this is an indication that magazines are doomed? He goes on to say it probably means the days of launches are over. We are having a busy year here in Australia with launches. This is interesting given the 10% decline in magazine sales.
AUSTRALIAN NEWSAGENCY BLOG GETS IT WRONG
Incorrect information has been reported in a recent Australian Newsagency blog, alleging that NDD ignores retailer supply level requests for Alpha when in fact retailers were invited to review their supply in NDD’s e Newsletter on 7th April. The blog also suggests ‘lack of control’ by retailers has resulted in ‘some’ closed NDD accounts – an opinion that is unspecified, unsubstantiated and incorrect.
This is what NDD sent out to newsagents overnight. They are responding to my April 7 blog post. It is a surprising statement from the company. I approached NDD last year to have them stop supplying me with certain titles. They refused. Indeed, I have a stream of correspondence on this with the company. This is what caused me to blog as I did.
Through my work with other newsagents I have more examples of NDD refusing to stop supplying titles when requested by newsagents. Newsagents have also told me that they closed their NDD account because of this issue.
While NDD can make any claim they like, their claim that I got it wrong with what I wrote about Alpha is, itself, wrong. The way for NDD to fix this is to agree to every request from newsagents to cut supply of titles.
When speaking at newsagent conferences and workshops over the last two years I have asked what do we stand for? A common answer from newsagents was community connection, being local.
Being connected with the local community is a good unique selling proposition when most of what we sell in our newsagencies is available from other businesses, usually bigger than ours. By trading off the local connection we connect with others who are community-minded. But I wonder how locally connected we really are.
I know that in my own businesses we could do more – and I guess this is what started me thinking about this topic. I want the local connection to be real for us and for our customers.
My question for newsagents this morning is whether we are as community minded as we think? Is the connection more in our heads than our actions?
I started thinking about this over the weekend when researching how some businesses in small UK and US towns connect with their communities.
Here are some questions you could ask yourself to test your community connection:
I suspect there is a big difference between the community connection of a newsagencies in the city compared to the country. I’d be interested in what others think.
Given the resources in our businesses, there are initiatives we could take to help the local community and build our connection. Here are a few:
IGA has an excellent presentation online about their community involvement.
What is environmentally better than buying a book or magazine? Buying it online to either read on the Internet or download to read on your computer. No muss, no fuss, no scattered magazines lying around taking up space, no magazines to throw in a landfill.
From a strong pitch last week by Zinio on the environmental benefits of digital magazines.
The new Simpsons card range from Hallmark is popular. We are seeing excellent results in our stores. Since the range is right at the front of the shop, it is working as a good drawcard. Licenced product like this Simpsons range is important for newsagents since shows us as being current. The card department plays an important role in demonstrating our relevance and an even more important role in driving overall business performance. It responds well to owner attention but, unfortunately, does not receive enough of this.
VANA announced today that it is quitting its Futures Project. Regulars here will know that I have been a critic of this project from the outset. It is one of the reasons I resigned from VANA in February.
VANA has an excellent opportunity to refocus on being an association. Now, more than ever, newsagents need strong representation on policy and supplier issues.
Congratulations to the VANA Board for making this decision.
Newsagents have been granted collective bargaining rights by the ACCC. The QNF, NANA and VANA, state associations representing newsagents in Queensland, New South Wales and the ACT and Victoria have been granted the right to represent newsagents in this. This is an initiative started by the QNF and NANA. Congratulations to them for pursuing this for newsagents.
We sell upwards of 50 copies of People’s Friend magazine each week at our Forest Hill store. This week, we have the latest issue co-located next to the Herald Sun (in the old Alpha magazine stand) in pursuit of even stronger sales. The free novel which comes with People’s Friend should also help drive sales.
In its usual location, we use People’s Friend as a beacon to support other titles. This is part of our honey pot strategy, using popular products to supportproducts which are likely to appeal to the same customer.
We are promoting the latest issue of Gourmet Traveller at the counter this week. The free Italian cookbook which comes with the magazine earns it a place in this high traffic location. As we are finding more often the case now, we received little in the way of marketing collateral to support the title – so we made our own.
“Now the consumers have taken charge — they decide what news is,” Osborne said. “Monopoly power vanished. The existence of a competitive marketplace is permanent. And we should have known and we should have anticipated that.”
This is former Dallas Morning News publisher Burl Osborne speaking at a newspaper editors convention on the weekend. This speaks to our channel as much as it speaks to newspaper publishers.
Osboorne’s speech reminds us that we need to compete, on all levels – with other newsagents and indeed anyone offering products and services which compete with our business.
Our channel was established with monoply as a core point of difference in the 1800s. That ended years ago.
Not enough newsagents have embraced the opportunity of competition.
Amazon has reported a 24% jump in profit for the quarter ending March 31 compared to the same quarter last year. This is on the back of an 18% increase in revenue to US$4.89 billion. These results are significant when compared to the performance of retail businesses in the same period. Publishers Weekly analyses the results in some detail:
Gains would have been higher if the impact of currency translations is excluded. Unfortunately for publishers, however, the gains were driven by the retailer’s electronics and other general merchandise segment in both North America and abroad, which had gains of 42% and 34%, respectively.
Amazon started in business selling content and is now achieving significant growth selling infrastructure for accessing content. Hmm…
The Financial Times reports on changes in the UK around the distribution of newspapers and magazines.
We ought to expect structural changes globally in the distribution of newspapers and magazines as publishers look for ways to improve efficiency and increase or at least protect sales.
While not on the scale of the UK changes, the changes about to flow here in Australia around the new XchangeIT platform will separate newsagents into those moving forward with magazine distributors in pursuit of efficiencies from the shop floor right back to magazine publishers and those standing still with more manual and less flexible processes.
