We have placed Prevention and Good Health on display alongside our main newspaper stand because it’s the time of health and fitness resolutions. We see a significant change in customer traffic through school holidays – the opportunity for impulse purchases increases. Given the space the display takes, we’ll leave the display up only for a week.
With the considerable media coverage the February issue of marie claire has attracted in the last 24 hours, we are making sure that we have prime space set aside for tomorrow morning when it goes on-sale.
I listened to plenty of the debate on talkback radio and read many of the stories online. While not an expert in the field, the fuss does not resonate with me, especially once I read the story in the Sydney Morning Herald and the interview with the General Manager of The Butterfly Foundation.
Demand for the issue is bound to be strong – newsagents ought to be ready and with a good display in prime position. While there are challenges around the issue, our job is to sell magazines. This is why we ought to be completely opportunistic.
Since customers will comment about the story, be sure to read some of the media coverage from the last 48 hours so you are up with it. Talk with your employees about the issue too. There is an opportunity here to be informed and ready to show off the difference in a newsagency shopping experience.
We are promoting Burke’s Backyard to shoppers leaving our women’s magazine aisle this week. This title has been out a week and has already sold well thanks to our initiatives so stock is limited for the ACP display initiative we have been asked to do this week. The best time to promote a popular title like Burke’s Backyard is from the day of on-sale. A week later has challenges.
These displays we do on the back of the ACP basket builder stand continue to work well for us. We use them to drive impulse purchases – with success.
We are promoting the latest issue of Prevention magazine at our main newspaper stand. It’s been tremendously successful for us in this location since launching last year.
While we also have copies in our women’s health area, the newspaper location is best for us.
As I blogged last week, I consider Prevention to be the launch of 2009. It connects particularly well with newsagency shoppers.
I asked the creative team at my software company, Tower Systems, to create a poster to promote crossword titles as a New Year gift for newsagents. I was looking for something to connect with crosswords as a holiday activity, something with which I could promote the category in the front of my own newsagencies. The version we have gone with is the second option they developed.
Click here to download a PDF for local printing. Use it anywhere you feel it will help you sell crosswords.
I am happy to continue to leverage the resources I have at Tower to create marketing collateral for newsagents to use. It’s another way of putting something practical back into the channel.
Jeff Jarvis has written an excellent post about News Corp. and advertising at his BuzzMachine blog.
So I think we’re seeing News Corp. milk the dying cash cow. Newspapers aren’t going to grow and will shrivel and sometimes die. The value of local stations is only going to shrink. (MySpace was a mistake.) So News Corp. is begging for cash wherever it can get it — from readers online or viewers on cable (via cable companies’ billing) — no matter that there’s no strategy there.
Australian newsagents are wrestling with the new take it or leave it newspaper distribution and retail contracts from News Ltd. In the documentation accompanying the contracts, News makes it clear that it is reviewing its newspaper model in Australia. This review is about News and its costs and revenue requirements. It is not about newsagents.
Given that a review is under way, newsagents could argue, in a court or some other appropriate forum, that it would be more appropriate to extend the current contracts than to sign these new non-negotiable contracts which weaken the position of newsagents.
At around 5:30am yesterday someone tried to kick in the front door and a side window of one of my shops. The police have video evidence from centre management as well as from our own security system.
While they were not successful, the damage and resulting disruption is considerable. There is a very large glass window to replace and two doors to re-hang.
My thoughts on this go back to some of the comments from my arrest post last week. If they are caught they will get a slap on the wrist and no real punishment.
I plan to find out the legal position on creating a retail crime shame site where we can all post images of people convicted of crime against retail businesses.
It’s a week since Christmas and boxed Christmas cards are still selling well. With most other retailers now out of this space and having a good range we are the local go-to place in the four shopping centres in which we have boxed Christmas cards.
We’re at 50% off and are achieving slightly above 50% margin on sales.
Based on experience and current stock levels, we feel that we have another week of good sales left before we quit the remnants at a deeper discount.
We have found that boxed cards work well when you mix the range from mainstream card suppliers with specialists (like Cardpac) in the field. Our most successful outlet displays the range on tables and not in the card company stands. This makes shopping easier for the power shoppers. We go out in late September / early October.
Sales have grown every year.
Boxed Christmas cards should work anywhere.
Thinking about the year ahead and resolutions and hopes in particular over the last few days, here is what I would like to see in 2010 for the newsagency channel:
News Limited pauses the introduction of their new newspaper distribution and retail contracts and undertake greater group consultation with newsagents and consumers on issues surrounding newspaper distribution.
Magazine distributors agree on new trading terms with newsagents which reduce the costs to us for failed titles (<50% sell through) and long on sale periods (>30 days), recognise the increased cost of retail space and labour, and, give us genuine control of the titles we receive. There are newsagents who struggle to expand specialisation because of the failure of the current system and others who will close this year due to the financial distress of the current system.
Newspaper and Magazine publishers realise that the retail newsagent network is a valuable asset and finally engages with them on customer acquisition in a way which financially respects the network and rewards them handsomely for success.
Card companies stop ten years of inaction and finally release the common data structure for cards to enable better business management by newsagents.
Newsagents realise that they have more control over their businesses than they use. They experiment more with new product categories, new layouts and new ways to grow their businesses. Too many newsagents are waiting for others to lead them. They need to lead themselves, store by store. Some are, but not enough.
More newsagent associations realise that newsagents want strong representation. Associations competing with GNS for the supply of stationery, for example, is ridiculous.
Newsagents understand that GNS is a key asset of the channel. Like it or not, the health of the channel is dependent to some extent on the health of GNS. Buying from them strengthens our buying power.
This is by no means complete. While there are many more points I could add, the points above are those I see as vital to the core health of our channel.
In terms of resolutions, I’ll continue to use this place to champion the place of newsagencies in the Australian landscape and to lobby for fairer treatment by suppliers.
While I don’t have a crystal ball, I do know that 2010 will see considerable change presented to newsagents. Probably more than 2009. The best way for us to engage with change is to encourage it, to ride atop the wave rather than being dumped by it.
Here’s to a successful 2010!
We doubled our sales of the Christmas 2009 edition of Family Circle magazine compared to the same issue in 2008. Our success has been achieved through proactive engagement with and promotion of Family Circle on our part. We are thrilled with the result. It’s a terrific reward for the effort we invested in the title. We did this not because of the offer of a publisher reward or a demand but because we sensed that we could achieve a lot more from this title. We were right. The success shows what you can achieve through promotion and embracing change – moving the title around was key to our success.
There are some who are critical of the time I give magazines on this blog. While I see changes with the medium and am frustrated with the distribution model, magazines are currently the best channel-wide point of difference we have. This is why I aggressively manage the category. Results like what we have achieved with Family Circle show that the effort is paying off.
Myer in Melbourne discounted their 2010 calendars by 75% three days ago (December 30). They clearly want to quit the category quickly.
We have stocked our business with calendars to keep us going well into February. Based on previous year’s of experience we will sell plenty of calendars through this time and mainly at 50% off retail. A couple of my stores are only discounting at 25% – we choose the discount level based on demand and competition nearby.
Moves like this by Myer present smaller retailers like us with excellent opportunities. Calendar sales after January 1 are easier to achieve. Just like boxed card sales are right now – with so few retailers in the space range is more important than price as long as it is fair for the time of year.