Our sales for the current issue of Donna Hay magazine are more than double what we have historically achieved by this point in the on-sale period.
We will sell out with time to spare. Overall sales will be up on recent issues.
I put our success of this issue of Donna Hay down to an excellent free gift, the tea towel is high quality, and our own aggressive merchandising approach.
We have Donna Hay magazine with our food titles and with the column of food magazines in the middle of our women’s weeklies titles – surrounded by weeklies on either side.
While we had it at the counter for the first three days of the on-sale, this did not work for us. Our success has come from the placement with the weeklies. I watched a customer yesterday early in the morning. The picked up Take 5 and That’s Life and browsed but did not purchase Donna Hay. While we did not get the Donna Hay sale this time, they browsed it when the would most likely have missed it had it not been in this second location.
Our success with Donna Hay and food titles in general is due to this column we made space for in with our weeklies. It costs nothing to try.
Experimenting like this is important for newsagents. it separates us from the cookie-cutter approach of supermarkets, convenience stores and petrol outlets. It is only by experimentation in our newsagencies that we find what works for us to drive significant sales growth. This is usually achieved by placement outside of what publishers request for their title.
Smart publishers will tap into this opportunity and work more close with newsagents.
Mark I followed your lead on this and have to agree. Donna Hay sales are up. Thanks for the tip.
Mark.
Good to see that the Donna Hay issue sold well. I am very keen to understand a bit more about the question you raise “Smart publishers will tap into this opportunity and work more close with newsagents.”. I am keen to do this and would really like some feed back as to how best I can do that believe me I am a great advocate of the newsagents (First job was a paper boy for the local). I am very keen to understand how each newsagent decides on positioning of categories, promotional concepts what works what doesn,t. In essence I see my role as a conduit between your businesses and our business with the goal of selling more mags as efficiently as posibbkle.
Thanks
Steve