In one of my newsagencies yesterday we sold out of The Sunday Age at noon. The distributing newsagent will not even take our call if we call after noon on any day of the week. Even though we are only a couple of minutes away they would rather miss the sale than make stock available for us.
Newspaper publishers need to look more carefully at sell out situations in retail only newsagencies. Our software lists sell outs and the trading time lost. This is an easy report for area managers to access. In our case, the report contains bad news, especially on weekends for The Age.
I have this problem with my subagents they think i am an endless supply of papers . it is impossible to carry extra papers for every subagent just incase they sell out .
In our case Shaun I know they have the stock.
I don’t supply extras after 12pm on weekends either. We have to have some work-life balance.
I do supply extras after 12pm on weekdays though.
Our subagents know this, so know to call before 12pm on weekends.
Our problem is that our sub-agents either don’t call for extras at all, or call and say they ran out 1 hour ago and complain about the sales they lost. There is only so many times I can say call 1 hour before you run out instead of waiting until you have actually run out before I want to scream.
In this case the newsagent is open and trading.
I am also a sub agent, the question I have is if I sell out regularly why do I not get more stock? They are very quick to reduce number if I return stock but I never get additional numbers unless I specifically ask. When I was a distribution agent my software looked at sales history and adjusted accordingly both up and down.
Brett i supply 10 subagents and i only need each subagent to return 2 each and that is 20 returns for me even though i sell out . so the folowing week i get cut back because of those returns . today as an example i am left with hardly any papers on my shelf because of the cut backs . now my subbys still received there normal supply because my paper work is printed the day before with me not knowing i am getting cut back . so next week the same subbys return there 20 papers and i get cut back again . it is never ending circle of everyone getting stuffed around . If you have always been a subagent i feel for you that you cannot get a supply but hey if you were on direct supply at one stage and handed in the right to get a supply direct then to bad . you cannot have your cake and eat it to . i just love waking up early to deliver papers but i also like the fact no one, bar the paper company and myself decide on what i get .
We have this problem every day of the week. Our returns average out at 1 – 2 % at present. Last week we returned 13 papers total!
We have repeatedly requested that our supplying agent give us enough supply for a 5% return rate at minimum. Not an unreasonable request considering publishers want them to aim for between 7 and 8%.
This same supplying agent doesn’t answer their phone on weekends, nor early morning.
Shaun,
For larger subagents there is no reason Fairfax and News Ltd cannot setup connect accounts and manage the supply seperatly from the distribution agents. The newspapers would be delivered to the same place, just with a different label.
We gave up our delivery run because we couldn’t find drivers (nor could Fairfax, News Ltd or the other agent). Why should we have to put up with the undersupply and incompetence of our supplying agent.
Jarryd,
We have seen 7/11, Safeway, Safeway Petrol, Coles, Coles Express, Bunnings and Mobil go this way for HWT, and Safeway and 7/11 for Fairfax. They even do the billing for us so its saves us chasing payment. In addition, there are a few direct drops for Winning Post, and Caltex gets some Sun’s direct, but we do billing for all this.
As distribution only, I would prefer it if Fairfax and HWT did do this for all subagents.
This would make my life easier.
As a supply agent, we carefully monitor and adjust supplies in our own system and on Connect, but without the support of our suppliers, it is a frustrating exercise. Across-the-board cuts are made sometimes overnight and without warning, causing us to change supplies at the last minute also.
Here in Metro Brisbane, it can sometimes take up to 3 hours to have extras delivered to our store, by which time there is nobody available to deliver them to subs.
If talking to your supplying agent has no satisfactory outcome, I would recommend contacting the supplier directly. I say this because one of our subs did just that and our supplier forced us to change how we dealt with that subagent to avoid losing that income.
But remember, your supplying agent is probably doing it tough, too, trying to balance supplies/returns for everyone on his run.
Wendy,
We know our supplying agent is not doing it tough (as evidenced by the number of papers they have excess each day). This agent is simply trying to make us run out of newspapers and reduce the number of returns he has to collect.
We have raised the issue with the publishers to no avail. We even sent both the agent and publisher a detailed spreadsheet of the quantities we would need for 5% returns based directly on our average sales over a number of weeks. We did not get the increases requested. Our relationship with the publishers is not great because we handed back our run.
This agent is frankly a grumpy old man ths tdoesnt enjoy being in the industry. We actually have a number of customers that travel from across town to get their newspapers and magazines from us because they refuse to deal with the other newsagent whom is often refered to as “Mr Grumpy”.
I’m looking at the less friendly dispute resolution options available to us – including legal options.
My experience with the Herald and Weekly Times is that they work hard to resolve performance issues with their newspapers affecting their newspapers in retail only newsagencies. From what I hear, they are the stand out of all News Limited capital city dailies in this area.
WHEN WE BOUGHT OUR NEWSAGENCY THE PREV OWNER WAS KNOWN AS A GRUMPY OLD MAN BUT I THINK THE INDUSTRY DRIVES US TO IT, EVERY WEEK MY HUSBAND HAS TO GO AND ASK FOR PAYMENT FROM SEVERAL OF THE SUBAGENTS, THEY ARE QUICK TO COMPLAIN WHEN THEY RUN OUT OF PAPERS BUT SILENT WHEN THEY HAVE ALOT OF RETURNS,I HAVE HAD CUSTOMERS COMPLAINING ALL SUNDAY BECAUSE I RAN OUT OF CALENDERS YET COLES WHO RECEIVED THEM DECIDED NOT TO HAND THEM OUT SO I HAD THEIR COUPONS AS WELL AS MY OWN CUSTOMERS, THE NEWPAPER COMPANY RANG TO LET ME KNOW OF A NEW SUBAGENT IN THE AREA THAT I WAS TO SUPPLY & HE WOULD DROP OFF THE SUPPLY AGREEMENT ANOTHER REP INFORMES THIS PERSON IS TRYING TO TRADE UNDER A BRAND NAME VERY SIMULAR TO ANOTHER AND IS BEING SUED, AND STOPED OPENNING AFTER SPEEKING TO THE NEWSPAPER REP HE 2 HAD REC A LETTER HE HADNT LET US KNOW. ALONG WITH THE MAG COMPANYS OVERSUPPLY AND THE DAY TO DAY RUNNING CRAP YOU BECOME GRUMPY