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

Month: October 2009

Professional newsagency customer newsletter

nx_foresthill_nl.jpgClick here for a PDF version of the customer newsletter for our newsagency for October.  This is available free to all customers from a stand at the front of our newsagency.  We switched this more promotional style of newsletter in August.  It works better promoting our offers than the more newsy style newsletter it replaced. We pitch price (ink, cards and magazines) range (cards) and being green (O’Bon pens and journals).  We are pretty happy with the corporate image this presents for our business.

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Customer Service

How bagged magazines hurt publishers

fat_country_collections.JPGWe didn’t have space for a new country title which arrived on Wednesday and had to make a decision as to which title to return early.  Australian Country Collections was chosen because it took up more space than other titles as it was bagged with a giveaway.  the title had been on sale for close to two months and we still had stock in three pockets.  Had this issue not been bagged we could have kept ito one pocket and not returned the issue early.

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magazines

September sales results

September has been an interesting month for newsagents.  I have seen stores with excellent growth and others with dreadful figures.  From what I see, it continues the patchy economic condidions we find ourselves in.

In our own case, we had a good month overall: books – down 17% (due to differences in sales cycles over the two years); calendars – up 14%; cards – down 16% (due to run down to a complete card relay and 25% supplier replacement yesterday);  confectionery – up 2%; Gifts – up 83%; magazines – down 7%; ink – up 25%; stationery – down 24% (fluctuation in some corporate business).  Overall traffic is up 3% but average sale value is down 10%.

We are moving to higher margin product and this is creating a healthier business.

In magazine categories, partworks is the big drop – if we take these out of the figures, the magazine department is down around 3%; food – down 22%, sport – down 18%; women’s interests – down 12%; women’s weeklies – down 3%; computers – down 29%; craft – down 17%.

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Newsagency management

Apple tablet to reshape how we consume news?

There has been plenty of noise online about the soon to launch Apple Mac Tablet including speculation of negotiations between magazine publishers and Apple about getting magazine content available through iTunes.  PC World has a good summary of news.

Such a move is guaranteed to happen as I have noted here before.  Once newspaper and magazine friendly devices appeal to consumers, publishers will embrace them.  This happened with music.  It makes sense.

Smart newsagents are building flexible businesses to cope with change while also working hard to make the most from print product in serving consumers who prefer this medium.

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magazines

Dust storm magazine shows off innovation

strange_light.jpgStrange Light is a one-shot 40 page magazine about the dust cloud which enveloped Sydney last week.  The magazine was created in a day and a half using MagCloud from Hewlett Packard. The storm occurred on September 23 and the magazine was published and available for purchase on September 25.  Amazing.  Read the publishers blog post about the process here.

This is an excellent example of how MagCloud and similar technology could change special interest publishing, especially around an event or a single topic.

I am grateful to Andrew Batt of Bangkok Station tipping me off to Strange Light.

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magazines

Sudoku junk proves why we need a magazine czar

sudoku_junk.JPGAs if we do not have enough sudoku titles already.  These five new titles arrived on Wednesday.  We were not supposed to receive any.  Ugh!  I am kind of glad we did because I got to see this junk.  These titles should never get access to the newsagency channel, not with the range of sudoku titles we have in our newsagencies already.  This is why we need a magazine czar to grant access approval to our retail network.  Someone controlling access to our network, based on range anf performance criteria, would have blocked these titles from getting through.

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magazines

Promoting The Australian Women’s Health Diary 2010

fhn_health_diary.JPGWe started promoting The Australian Women’s Health Diary 2010 at the front counter of our newsagency from yesterday.  This is the first time we have done such a display for this at the counter.  While the diary usually sells very well, we wanted to see what we could achieve with a good display at our best impulse purchase location.  Our goal is to sell 200 copies over the next few weeks.  The sooner the better given space challenges of this time of the year.

I like the poster supplied to promote the diary – it appeals to the targer customer.

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Diaries

Promoting Dolly magazine and Roxy duffle bag

fhn_dolly_oct09.JPGWe are promoting the latest issue of Dolly magazine at the entrance to our women’s magazine aisle. It replaced Australian Women’s Weekly which had been up for a week.

What may not be obvious from first glance at the photo is that we sliced up three of the posters to create the strips in front of each shelf promoting the free Roxy duffle bag. This attention to detail is important since we have the magazine opened out showing the bag.

We put this display up yesterday and already it is generating good interest.

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magazines

Update on XChangeIT update

Here is an update on the status of yesterday’s update to XChangeIT Link:

We had a few issues with a couple of the distributor gateways during the night, and therefore files will be delayed in delivery to you. We will contact you with updates during the day via email. Gotch & NDC may also send their invoices via email, depending on the status later today.

I have heard from a number of newsagents that the link has loaded successfully overnight.

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newsagent software
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