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

Month: May 2010

Are there to be different MasterChef magazine editions?

My understanding is that there are three stock codes for the MasterChef magazine which launches next week.  One stockcode for the magazine for supermarkets, one for Coles and one for newsagents (and others).  This suggests that there will be three versions of the title.

Given that POS technology enables the publisher to see where sales are achieved, the only reason I can think of for three stock codes is that the magazines will differ between the channels.

Such an approach would not surprise me given that I would expect it to be very popular in supermarkets.  The MasterChef brand is closely aligned with Coles so it would equally not surprise me to find a Coles specific issue.

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magazines

Advertising the newsagency on community radio

We have made a decision to advertise our newsXpress Forest Hill store on community radio for the next three months. This is in addition to considerable letterbox flyer and other marketing activity we undertake. The community station we are supporting, Golden Days Radio, connects with our demographic and is strong in our region.

Our plan is to run a different commercial each month with an offer for their listeners. We are starting with a commercial about magazines and our unique value proposition. We decided on magazines because of the popularity of the medium among older customers.

We will be on air three times a day seven days a week for three months plus some other promotional activity with the station.

We continue to send out flyers to thousands of homes to promote our ink, books and other offers.  We also promote inside the centre as I have discussed here before.  While advertising on commercial radio would be interesting, we felt that a community radio campaign was worth the investment because of the demographic focus and the community connection.

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newsagency marketing

Mother’s Day sales tracking well

mothers-day-forest-hill.JPGWe are using our display window to promote Mother’s Day gifts and cards. Next to this, just past the window, shoppers in the centre can buy from an even bigger range of cards, gifts and Darrell Lea Mum’s Bags than in the window.

Mother’s Day is tracking well from what we can see – not only in our own stores but others too. We already have empty card pockets and while this is not ideal, it is better than full pockets.

From a gift perspective, we have been conservative in our buying this year, keeping to below $20 for most items and carrying stock which will work in the gift department beyond the season.  The centre has eight gift shops and majors and deep discount stores with gift offers so it is a department we take care with.

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newsagency marketing

Those damn Nigerian email scammers

Maybe it’s a seasonal thing.  I and several other newsagents with their contact details online have received “orders” by email in the last couple of weeks from scammers wanting to purchase products to be paid for by credit card.  What is interesting is that the items they have requested we do usually carry.  They have some some homework on our range.

My advice to any newsagent approached to ship goods overseas with payment via a credit card is don’t engage.  Odds on it is a scam.

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Ethics

How we interact with magazines

Sitting on a plane yesterday morning flying from Melbourne to Newcastle I enjoyed watching how people nearby interacted with magazines. It was like I was in the magazine fan zone of the plane, magazines were the entertainment medium of choice.

To my left was a lady devouring Madison. I say devouring because she was reading it from front to back, taking her time. At one point, I saw her brush a photo gently with her hand as if she wanted to feel the dress in the shoot.

Across the aisle and to the right, a lady was reading Prevention, making notes on what looked like a TO DO list, underlining points of interest and folding back page corners for future reference. It was like the magazine was guiding changes in her life.

Across the aisle and in the row in front, a guy was drooling over Street Machine – he didn’t turn the page that often, he’d look at a photo and then look away as if carried by a dream.

Next to my Prevention lady was an older couple sharing Take 5 and That’s Life, taking turns to make moves on puzzles.

I had been watching for some time before I realised that I don’t often notice magazines beyond the newsagent perspective.

The level of interaction and obvious enjoyment was heart warming.

Newsagents and those who work in newsagencies work hard putting out new issues of magazines, removing from the shelves old issues, keeping the displays tidy, and managing the department in many other ways. It’s hard work. I suspect that many of us don’t get time to interact with magazines as I noticed my fellow travellers did yesterday morning.

Magazines we sell in our shops help people change their lives, dream wonderful dreams, keep brain active and feel good.

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magazines

Bigpond blocks newspaper home delivery account emails

Spam rules within Telstra’s Bigpond organisation are getting in the way of some Victorian newsagents who want to email customer accounts.  This has meant that the newsagents have had to make other arrangements to get the business accounts to their customers by email.  Tower Systems has helped out by providing newsagents with free mail server facilities for sending out home delivery accounts.

This issue has come to the fore in recent days because of the fee changes announced by the Herald and Weekly Times.

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newspaper home delivery

Newsagents should check MasterChef magazine numbers

Newsagents expecting to sell plenty of stock of the new MasterChef magazine ought to contact Gordon and Gotch to determine their allocation and ensure they have the stock coming they expect to need. I have heard of several instances this week where initial allocation was considerably below what the newsagent expects to sell.

Think back to last year and the launch of Prevention.  The allocation numbers determined by Gotch were low in plenty of stores and sales were missed as a result.

By at least checking your numbers you have a chance to get close to what you need and help Gotch get the allocation right.  This must be what the publisher, advertisers and newsagents all want.

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magazine distribution

Strong early engagement with iPad newspaper apps

In a conference call yesterday discussing quarterly numbers, for News Corporation, Rupert Murdoch said that they have 64,000 users of the iPad application for the Wall Street Journal.  It’s important to understand the difference between a use of the iPad app and someone paying.  It’s early days to see the monetisation model for the iPad.  The prospects are good but it will be a year before really useful numbers which reflect churn and other criteria can be assessed.

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Media disruption

Excuse us while we play

You’ll notice an ad to the right.  We are playing with Google Adsense to see what happens.  With between 1,200 and 1,500 visitors a day, Google feels that there is a revenue opportunity.  We’ll see what happens over the next few weeks after which I will decide whether the ads stay.  In the meantime, we are likely to play with style changes to see what works best.

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About us

Australia Post to revamp stationery offer?

I have heard from several sources that government owned Australia Post outlets are set to revamp their stationery offer with supply to be controlled outside the organisation. One contact says they will offer stationery under a new sub brand in store while another says that the new supplier will fly under the radar – i.e. no sub brand.

Newsagents competing with a government owned outlet (there are 865 of them) should watch out for a more competitive stationery offer from Australia Post.

While stationery is still some distance from selling postal services, it is closer to their core offer than sewing machines and laptop computers.

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Australia Post

Chewing gum trashes Rolling Stone

rolling-stone-gun.JPGTwo copies of Rolling Stone magazine have been trashed in one of my newsagencies thanks to a customer wedging chewing gum between them. This is disgusting behaviour. It trashes the product and makes our business look bad to someone else browsing Rolling Stone.

This type of behaviour is not uncommon in newsagencies– it comes with the territory.

What can we do about it? Be more vigilant I guess. However, labour necessary for such vigilance is expensive, especially for a slim margin product like magazines. So, we tolerate it and whinge a bit.

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Newsagency challenges

Promoting Burke’s Backyard for impulse purchase

bukres-backyard-may2010.JPGWe are promoting Burke’s Backyard in front of our newspaper stand this week. We think that the free roses booklet will appeal to our customers – hence the placement in what has been a good impulse purchase location for us. We will leave the title here until the weekend and reassess based on sales.  While not the prettiest display, we have found this taactical placement to work better than a more attractive display.

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magazines

Free cookbook for Mother’s Day

aww-cakes-may2010.JPGWe are promoting the ACP cookbook Mother’s Day offer to shoppers as they leave our women’s magazine aisle this week as well as in with our cookbooks and one other high traffic location in-store. We are promoting the offer heavily as it’s an opportunity to sell down cookbook stock.  We want to do this so we can reconfigure the range.  Mother’s Day is an excellent opportunity to clear out older stock.

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magazines

April a rugged month for sales in newsagencies

Sales data I have seen from a selection of newsagencies for April 2010 and compared to 2009 shows we have just experienced a very tough month.  Even allowing for the Easter impact, sales in core departments – magazines greeting cards and newspapers – are down in most stores.  Several newsagencies have reported a double digit decline in sales.  The average overall decline in sales is 5%.

There is some good news – some departments have reported growth.  Books, Gifts and lottery products have all performed well in stores reporting an overall decline.

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Newsagency challenges

Smart marketing for MasterChef magazine

masterchef-magazine1.JPGKudos to News Magazines for the teaser postcard they sent to newsagents and other magazine retailers yesterday promoting the soon to launch MasterChef magazine. I can’t recall a publisher teasing the launch of a new title in this way. With magazine departments crowded and busy, the postcard is a good reminder of a major launch without intruding too much on our day to day business.

I am hopeful that the innovation of the postcard is an indicator of what we can expect when the title launches later this month – in terms of content and supporting collateral. This will be essential for the new food title to find its place in a crowded food segment.

Ideally, I would like to see publishers launching titles provide retailers with tools to help leverage retail sales:

  • Flyers to drive putaway requests.
  • Flyers to give to customers making other purcahses in-store – with room on the flyer for a business stamp.
  • A one pager of research to help understand the title – target customer etc.
  • Better margin (50%) for the first three issues to respect the additional time and space commitment involved in launching a title.
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magazines

Logies give TV Week a boost

tv-week-logies.jpgTV Week is selling well this week thanks to Sunday night’s Logies Award TV Show telecast and we are making the most of the opportunity.

In addition to placement of the magazine in its usual location, we have a pocket of stock on our main newspaper stand (above the Herald Sun) as well as the display in the photo on the power end of our busiest magazine aisle. We will keep this additional activity up until Friday morning when we will trim back to one display.

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magazines

Promoting Harpers Bazaar magazine

harpers-bazaar-may2010.JPGWe are promoting Harpers Bazaar in its usual location deep in our main women’s magazine aisle with an A2 poster placed above a double column of stock. We chose to do this to promote the free Collette Dinnigan T-Shirt which comes with the magazine – the pack looks better opened out rather than folded as you will see in most retailers.

Like similar displays we have done in recent weeks, our hope is to educate shoppers about this regular location for Harpers Bazaar – it can be seen from outside the magazine aisle.

While we continue to promote magazines outside the magazine aisles, it is these in-location displays which have got my attention at the moment since they reinforce repeat behaviour around a title –I hope for this at least.  We are being careful to not overdo these in-location displays.  We have set ourselves a limit of no more than three across the whole magazine department.

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magazines

Tax review, what tax review?

Is it just me or have we experienced an illusion over the last year. The Henry tax review was announced with much fanfare. For the last few months we have waited for the big reveal. Journalists were locked up most of yesterday to prepare the toe big tax story of the decade and then, well, all we needed was a pretty lady in sequins and we’d have had a great illusion.

Maybe I am missing something but I don’t see any major tax reform in the package. Sure there may be a reduction in company tax and the possibility of faster depreciation for some purchases. No taxes have been eliminated. No red tape appears to have been eliminated. It all seems like an opportunity lost to me.

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Ugh!

Family Circle works well at the counter

family-circle-may2010.JPGWe made a decision this morning to display the winter edition of Family Circle at our main counter for the rest of this week.  Sales today have vindicated the move – all sales were from this impulse purchase location.

I expect this title to perform well on the back of strong sales for food titles and the respect that still exists for the Family Circle brand.

We also have Family Circle in our food segment.   Once the counter display comes down later this week we will feature it in another good impulse location.  Since the title is quarterly it will not be top of mind when shoppers browse the newsagency.  I know from past issues that it responds well to being moved over the course of the on-sale.

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magazines

Magazine ad revenue numbers interesting

March quarter magazine ad revenue numbers published by The Neilsen Company and reported in the Australian Financial Reveiw today (page 44) provide an indicator to the health of the major titles we sell.  Australian Women’s Weekly, Who, Better Homes & Gardens, Marie Claire, Cosmopolitan. OK!. House & Garden, InStyle, Women’s Health, Good Taste, NW and New Idea all report good growth in ad revenue.

While we rely on sales for our revenue, an increase in publisher revenue will provide better financial support for the titles and must, even in a small way, be reflected in their engagement with retailers through better product or more promotion.   The growth in revenue for monthly titles is particularly pleasing.

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magazines

If you are buying a newsagency don’t be ripped off at the stocktake

The most accurate way to determine the value of stock being sold with a business at the time of changeover is to use the stock value in a Point of Sale system used by the business and where a stocktake is done, using the system, at changeover.

The resulting stock listing and valuation is based on actual buy price of the stock and not a calculation of implied cost using the retail price as a starting point.

The old school manual stocktake method relies on a physical count just like the computer stock take. The difference lies in the calculation of the cost price. Some stock takers ask the outgoing newsagent for their mark-up. Others get some invoices and work out the mark-up based on some samples – this also relies on information provided by the outgoing newsagent.

The only accurate stocktake is based on real cost price data and real stock on hand count data. Anything less is inaccurate.

It is my experience that the incoming newsagent, especially one buying a newsagency for the first time, is the most vulnerable in the current common approach to stocktaking as they don’t know of tricks which can be used to inflate the stock buy price.

As they say, let the buyer beware.

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buying a newsagency

Consistency key to weekly magazine sales

weekly-magazines.JPGOur weekly magazine sales fell by 35 units in January through March 2010 compared with the same period in 2009. This is half a percent fall. The average I saw in the recent newsagent sales benchmark study is a fall of 7% for this segment.

I put our better than average performance down to active promotion outside the usual location for the titles, leveraging other high traffic areas (lotteries and newspapers) and being consistent in our women’s weeklies display and management.

The photo shows our weeklies section from yesterday (Saturday) afternoon. This is what it would look like most Saturdays. We adjust the layout daily based on stock availability and time in the week.

The actual location of titles is fixed except that we occasionally flip the column used by New Idea and Woman’s Day.

There are a some points about our women’s weeklies magazine display I’d note which work very well for us:

  • The crossword column on the far left drives excellent sales. Our main crossword section is in another aisle.
  • The food column on the far right of the photo also drives excellent sales. Our main food section is further down in the women’s magazine aisle.
  • The double pockets above the weeklies: Real Living. Better Homes & Gardens work well for us. We change the titles in these top two pockets at least weekly but only place titles which will appeal to the weekly magazine shopper.
  • As the week progresses and weeklies sell down we fill the space pockets with more titles which will appeal to the weekly magazine shopper.
  • We start the week with Famous and NW on the flat and moving part way up the columns. We flip this on Friday when OK! and Who come in.

These are all processes which we follow like clockwork. We found early on that having structure for magazines, especially the high volume titles which account for 20% and often more in sales saves time and helps drive sales.  The weeklies section in the photo including the crosswords and food column accounts for 23.5% of our sales.

Consistency is key for women’s weeklies and indeed all magazine segments.  That does not mean that you should ignore change.  Rather, once you set a location in place, use it consistently through the week, chasing the different shopper you see as the week unfolds.

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magazines

Promoting Mother’s Day 2010

fhn_mothers-day.JPGWe are promoting Mother’s Day across the front of our newsagency starting with the display window shown in the photo.  Here, we are promoting a selection of the Mother’s Day product we have in-store.  On the shop floor we have products displayed together by category: gifts, books, greeting cards, magazines and chocolate / candy.

Notice magazines in the list?  There are plenty of titles with a Mother’s Day theme (Lovatts crosswords, That’s Life, Australian Women’s Weekly to name a few) as well as the ACP cookbooks with their Mother’s Day offer of a free cookbook.

While Mother’s Day sales have been excellent so far, it is this next week which will drive the majority of the business for the season – hence the amount of floor-space we are giving it.  That said, we are being careful to not dilute the message that we are a newsagency to passers-by.

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Newsagency opportunities

In there value is newspaper posters?

I’d be curious as to whether any newsagents have evidence off the value of newspaper posters.  I ask this with the knowledge that some publisher representatives are visiting newsagents saying that they will lose 2% of the sale price of the newspapers they represent if they do not display newspaper posters.

As Australian publishers have placed their product in so many other retail outlets (coffee shops, fast food outlets, convenience stores, petrol outlets) and increased free distribution (sports events, cinemas, major events) they have shown newsagents that they are not as important as they once were.  This has encouraged newsagents to assess how they use their space.

It is often a one-sided relationship between newsagent and publisher.  Newsagents have no mechanism for dealing with publishers who act to dilute their retail sales yet publishers, some at least over recent weeks, quickly wave their big stick for not putting up a poster exactly where they demand it be put.

The best way for publishers and newsagents to engage is in dialogue pursuing a common goal – with big sticks checked at the door.

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Newsagency challenges
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