We are promoting the Best & Worst for 2009 double issue of Who at the counter this weekend. The Michael Jackson photo alone will help drive sales. We also have the issue on display at our Tattersalls counter as well as its usual location. While Diabetic Living did well at the counter, earlier this week we feel we will get more impulse business from Who this weekend.
According to a report at the Guardian, dozens of newsagents in London are paying 2 pence a copy to distribute the now free London Evening Standard from their shops. Two months ago the Standard went from a paid model (50p) to free at the same time as changing its distribution model. Newsagents wanting the traffic are demonstrating a preparedness to pay for this.
Will we do this here?
South Australian newsagents meet today to discuss the new News Limited contracts. This important newsagent organised meeting starts at 2pm at the Education Development Centre, Milner Street Hindmarsh. I’d encourage every newsagent in South Australia to attend. This is the best opportunity to discuss the new contracts and be better informed leading to making a decision about your next steps.
I’ve been invited to the meeting and will post an update here of what I am able.
We pulled our ad on Seek for new employees after seven days. We received a total of 358 applications – more than any ad we have run in the past. This tells me that in Victoria at least there is an enormous pool of people looking for work in retail. The calibre of applicants was good. We found five excellent candidates from the twelve we interviewed.
Crazy Bones were popular ten years ago. The first I knew they were back in was when we kept turning people away who were asking for them. Now we have stock and they’re selling like, well, crazy. We have them at the counter – they are an excellent impulse product, driving better margin sales. Now if only we had a heads up on the next fad. Better still, if only we could schedule these to fit with our overall marketing calendar. No matter, we are in on the Crazy Bones fad today and enjoying the sales ride.
The cross category opportunity is to have these displayed next to K-Zone and other magazines which would appeal to the Crazy Bones fan.
Even though only popular for a ‘season’ Crazy Bones fit our habit based product criteria – these are products people will return to purchase again and again through the duration of the season. Maintaining stock is important.
Newsagents are valuable to publishers for their newspaper home delivery service. This service is unique on a range of fronts which are worth newsagents contemplating as they discuss how to respond to the contracts proposed by News Limited. Here are some of the many unique points offered by newsagents:
Newspaper publishers who sell home delivery as a premium service ought to consider these and the many other points of the benefits of the newsagent home delivery model before taking further steps to break it up.
Magazine distributor NDD had hoped to have introduced a more immediate credit process for magazine returns processed by newsagents through XchangeIT. These changes are now not expected before March. This will disappoint many newsagents who committed to XchangeIT on the promise of faster returns processing.
The issue here is cash-flow. Every copy returned reflects cash owed the newsagents. The poorer performing the title the more cash owed.
A fairer financial model for magazines would be where we pay on scanned sales. As it stands, newsagents and publishers carry the risk and distributors nothing. They are paid for everything they do regardless. Every day we wait for a credit for stock which has failed is a cost to our business.
The Red group, the company behind Angus & Robertson, Supanews, Whitcoulls and Borders is launching an eBook service next year. Click here for details.
They will not be alone with more announcements due in the coming weeks.
We are promoting Diabetic Living from Pacific Magazines between our two busiest register points at the counter this week. We like to promote titles with freebies at this location – the free booklet with Diabetic Living makes it a compelling offer for this space. That and the fact that this title responds very well to in store promotion. Every time we bring it out from its usual location we see incremental business. It’s as if the title is not as much a destination purchase as other titles. We know promoting works for us, hence the prime space commitment. `We hope to leave this display up for a week – space is a challenge this time of year.
Either the publisher or distributor is to blame for today’s oversupply of Auto Salon magazine. Despite a poor sell through, some bright spark has decided we need more stock. Well, no we don’t unless someone wants our cash for a while. I am sure there will be an excuse, there always is yet the ‘gremlins’ which cause these ‘blips’ continue to have their way. Maybe it is the free CD they are giving away. I’d be surprised through – give the number of titles in the motoring section with freebies at the moment. We will not sell the extra stock unless the publisher changes approach and drives traffic to newsagencies looking for this title.
The Age newspaper has permitted half of today’s front page to be cobvered with another advertisement. This time from Mastercard. It looks ridiculous. You have no idea about the lead story of the day. The grey block looks like a print error. Indeed, that is what one customer thought. Isn’t the Age the Newspaper of the Year? Where is the news?
Check out the report in the Guardian about a visit made to a newsagent in London by News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch.
Newsagents in Australia, especially those with distribution and retaiol contracts, would be thrilled to an an opportunity to speak directly with Rupert Murdoch right now given the new contracts from News Ltd they must make a decision about.
Newsagents in Douth Australia have an opportunity to discuss the contracts at a meeting starting at 2PM this Friday. Click here for a copy of the flyer announcing the meeting and detailing concerns expressed by newsagents in relation to the contracts.
I’ve written here before about our success with the weekly People’s Friend magazine from the UK. Their books are also popular – usually achieving a 90% sell through. This is the kind of brand extension I like: financially efficient for us and easy to display with the main title. The People’s Friend brand is in our top 10. This is a testament to our demographic and our driving of the brand at every opportunity.
We are promoting two Australian Women’s Weekly cupcake and cookie cookbooks and mini cookie and cupcake kits on our Christmas gift table. While not the prettiest display in the store, it works. The cookbooks and the cookie and cupcake making kits promote each other. It is better to display them together like this than to have the cookbooks in one part of the shop and the kits elsewhere as one would see often in newsagencies.
We are tracking sales so that we know if the various items sell together and how often. Basket analysis like this is important if we are to track hunches to see if they pay off.
The cupcake and cookie kits are part of the newsXpress Christmas catalogue offer.
Rachel Singh, a student at the digital anthropology department of University College London, has launched an online study into the state of the magazine industry. The Shifting Landscape of Magazines encourages people working, or who have worked in the magazine industry to visit the site and post comments. I especiaally like the discussion going on about the future.
Editor & Publisher published an excellent interview with Warren Buffet overnight in which he says that the newspaper industry got too complacent with its success.
“It is so easy when you’ve got a wonderful business,” Buffett told E&P during a recent interview. “Complacency is pretty easy and it is why they weren’t looking over their shoulder at what was happening.”
He goes on to say the newspapers should have tried to get more revenue from circulation over the years. This resonates with distribution newsagents who are blocked from charging a fair price for the service they offer.
Buffets comments also resonate with retail newsagents, most of whom are yet to fully leverage print media traffic into new and more profitable categories which provide a brighter future.
Thee report ends with this quote from Buffet:
We have a business model that is eroding. The whole industry. But we still have a huge base of readers.
This is true for newsagents. New devices will change how people consume news, there will be a tipping point. We have a huge traffic base today. The question every newsagent must ask is am I leveraging that traffic for my future?
We need to switch from thinking we are in a push supply model to operating our businesses from the perspective of a pull supply model.
Newspapers are using their pages to run op-ed pieces about e-readers and other print disruptive technology. John Davidson jas a piece in the AFR on the weekend reviewing the Kindle. Doig Spiers takes a somewhat lighthearted swipe at e-readers in the Winnipeg Free Press.
We should not be lured into a false sense of security by this bad press for new devices. The music industry was. How many music stores are there today compared to ten years ago? Diversification is the name of the game, not radical diversification but smart diversification into categories which are naturally adjacent to the products we sell today.
With Men’s Health selling well when displayed with newspapers, we are trying Women’s Health in this location. Click on the image to see a larger version of the photo. We also have Women’s Health located in its usual position as well as with women’s fashion magazines. We plan to leave the display next to the newspaper stand in place for at least a week. We count stock in the pocket so we know what sells from this location compared to the usual home for the title. This is crucial in guiding whether we repeat the promotion here.
Dolly did not perform as well for us last week as expected so we turned the display around 180 degrees and now have the back of the ACP basket builder stand, with the Dolly display, facing into the dance floor area of the shop (in front of the countre) and the other titles on the stand facing customers leaving our two busiest magazine aisles. The change took a us few seconds to make – hence the lazy title – yet made a good visual change at the counter.
While it would have been easy to take the display down – we could certainly use the space – we felt there was an opportunity to sell more Dolly on impulse by making this change.
We have placed a stack of copies of the Women’s Weekly Puzzle Book next to the Australian Women’s Weekly. While we are short of space we made room since it performs well here. This is a brand extension which works. I’d expect good sales in the next week for Christmas gifts. We also have the Puzzle Book located in our main crossword section elsewhere in our magazine department. We will maintain this co-location approach for a month.
We have changed our weekly magazine display at the front of the newsagency from focusing on one title to a feature title and two columns of weeklies. We will run with this for the next few weeks – through the holidays. Regulars here will know that we have enjoyed considerable success selling weeklies from this location. This stand faces the mall and attracts people to purchase magazines who are not in our shop at the time. While it drives good business when promoting a single title, it is actually more valuable when promoting a range of titles as shown in the photo.
The Age newspaper today has another ad covering half the front page – this time for Deakin University. While not causing litter or covering the newspaper masthead like the post-it type ads The Age runs, this ad covers half the news on the from page. What does this say about the value of the news on the front page? Also, what does it say about the journalists, photographers, designers and other editorial people who have laboured over a front page of which they can be proud. It says that ad revenue is more important than their good work yet is their good work which provides a medium for carrying the advertising.
