This weekend in Brisbane marks then end of the 2010 GNS Market Fair series. These fairs continue to be the best opportunity for newsagents to see a large group of suppliers under one roof. They also provide a good opportunity for newsagency suppliers to talk with each other and develop co-operative strategies for supporting newsagents.
My only disappointment is the lack of support from circulation related companies. These core suppliers, vital to the current health of the channel, ignore the opportunity for face to face connection with newsagents.
If you are a Brisbane based newsagent I would urge you to get along this weekend.
“…the lack of support from circulation related companies. These core suppliers, vital to the current health of the channel, ignore the opportunity for face to face connection with newsagents.”
Funny that. As much as the rhetoric that’s shoved down our throats in response to major business issues is all about how newsagents are so highly valued by newspaper publishers (when they’re playing ‘good cop’; or the ‘bad cop’ methodology of contract quoting), their actions, or lack thereof, speak the loudest.
Take, for a timely example, how a certain local publication was four hours late this morning. As usual when such things happen, there was no explanation as to why, yet newsagents are forced to start their deliveries (or do second runs) after opening, bringing up all sorts of problems from wages to shop routines.
As I’ve said before, all it would take is, as the most common of courtesies, to send a quick blanket email off to let agents know, who’ve been sitting around since 2am, that they can go ahead and deliver the other stuff. And that it would be ok to expect their late ones to be done when it’s practicable to do so. And by practicable, I mean when it’s convenient, and other, more important, matters have been attended to, once a store opens. After all, delivery customers are definitely not a priority at our store once it opens. Only within our allowed ‘delivery time’ window.
In the meantime, I’m happy to field the phonecalls asking where Mr Blow’s, or Ms Hogget’s papers are. These are people we never see, and who never support our business. We are not prepared to stress out for them, and we’ll get their papers to them in our own sweet time. We don’t care why it happens. We do care, however, about the lack of respect afforded us collectively, in terms of getting our jobs done, and keeping our businesses running as smoothly as possible.
Besides, not all residents in this largeish area really care about the footy – but it seems to happen around the time a certain team is playing a big game 😉 😉
Newsagents are not considered customers of newspaper publishers. I have been told as much by a CM. And as a consequence, delivery customers are not customers of newsagents. They do not give us custom. We give them a cut-price newspaper for zaks, as dictated by the publisher. Therefore, we are not treated as customers, merely vehicles for their crazy, desperate customer deals. And the wheels appear to be fast falling off the distribution model as we know it – at least in this state. They’re scrambling for their own agenda to deal with the fallout of axle-graze when the last wheel comes flying off.
The other current example is where there has been no facility to enter data for a certain day’s publication on Connect for several weeks now. No explanation of that, either – no apology for inconvenience (the extra fax every week to notify of data). How hard would it have been to just let us know what was going on – all someone has to do is put a notice on the Connect homepage, advising of the problem. But no, again a common courtesy – even a PR/damage control opportunity – lost.
So one would not expect to see News Ltd (for example) at one of these fairs. They have nothing to contribute to The Channel. They continue to want to control it, but not be answerable to the attendees, who just happen to be newsagents. It would be like sending the lambs to the slaughter. And no executive would be paid enough to be willing to be (or send) that kind of frontline worker.
And we won’t be attending – too many late deliveries to do.
I would have liked to have seen Gold Lotto with a booth as well. They could have used it as an information/training outlet.