Magazine publishers and distributors could learn a valuable lesson from Australian calendar publishers and distributors.
For years now we (and a couple of hundred newsagents) have carefully selected the wide calendar range we carry. Each year we achieve double digit growth. We carry the risk with a firm sale commitment and work the commitment hard by ordering carefully, managing floorstock, refreshing the displays and ensuring excellent customer service around out point of difference.
Calendar publishers are happy. Customers are happy. We are happy.
We and plenty of other newsagents are showing that a commercial and respectful relationship between publisher and retailer works.
We are achieving what magazine publishers and distributors say is not achievable with magazines in the newsagency channel. We are demonstrating that we have the capacity to manage our title range and product volume to the benefit of all stakeholders.
Any magazine publisher keen to break out of the out of date magazine distribution model and form a commercial and direct relationship with newsagents should look carefully at the calendar model. It works.
my friend lost $1000s join the calendar club.
I always feel sorry for shopping centre newsagents when I see someone with a calender and diary stand set just just around the corner.
Dont feel sorry for them Steven encourage them to have a go themselves…we used to own two newsagencies in 2 supercentres….we set up calender (and diary) outposts ourselves each year and our best year ever (2007)we sold over $120,000 in 10 weeks @ about 55% average g/p so we grossed about $65k …rental was $2000 per week which i used to find astromically ridiculous paying that for such a small space of under 20 sq metres and we had to pay 10 weeks in advance prior to installation but it was take it or leave it from the centres view(it would probably be much more now i know i sold those stores 3 years ago) but with wages about $1200 per week and about $100 for incidental expenses it was a total of about $33k in expenses for the 10 weeks….as you can see from my figures a nice 30 k profit for 10 weeks work imho very much worth the effort for ,and i know other newsagents who did much better than us….for what its worth browntrout was my best and most supportive supplier and i was never part of any marketing group we did it all ourselevs ,,first year was a bit messy after that it was a great little xmas bonus we came to rely on,so long story short tell them to have a go
Calendars are good to us too, no where near Helens figures but we do not out post (the centres a bit small for that) and sell in excess of $20k from the shop.
I think that Marks point is that ordering what expect to sell on firm sale for the right margin would produce better results for all parties. Less wastage and more profit all for every onr who managed their range properly.
I’d be interested.
PS.. my comment is about magazines with calendars being mentioned as a positive example of how magazines could work.
Yes, this post is really about magazines. I wanted to show magazine publishers and distributors that we handle firm sale profitably and successfully for calendars.
Publishers and Distributors will never go for firm sale, they will go broke.
Interesting how other channels are streamlining the model from manufacturer/publisher to retailer and cutting out the distributor citing cost savings (pharmacy drug distribution – Pfizer has just gone direct and cut out the distributors/wholesalers between themselves and the pharmacies)
only problem being is yopu would have hundreds of accounts
Or more appropriately you could just select the accounts you want to have without copping rubbish from people you wouldn’t normally deal with.
Personally I don’t see the value in dealing directly with publishers, a lot of whom only produce i-2 titles, this would benefit nobody.
Surely the best solution is firm sale at a higher margin leaving us to manage what titles we stock and how many. A heads up on articles that may increase the sales of a special edition or an agreed formula for a small automatic increase in supply quantities (say 10-15%) to revert no our requested quantities immediately after the special issue.
Benefits for the distributor.
• No returns to process (this must cost them just as it costs us, less warehousing, labour etc.)
• We manage our supply which should provide cost savings for the distributor.
• Probably lower distribution costs when an wanted titles are not couriered out to us.
Benefits for us.
• Higher margin
• No return costs would off set the cost of unsold magazines if we manage our quantities efficiently.
• Possibility of selling left over magazines at a discounted price after the off sale date (to further recover costs).
• Probably less floor space required for magazines with out loss of sales.
I would not like to lose the infrastructure provided by distributors, XchangeIT etc as this is crucial to managing the magazine department efficiently and allows us to deal with only a few accounts providing more benefits again.
I am sure there are many more benefits to fixing the current as opposed to tearing it down to deal direct with all publishers. This would surely be full of unforseen problems.
I’m a bit late finding this thread. Hope someone is out there reading this, though. I’m an designer/photographer about to embark on the first of what I hope to be an annual project to produce for sale my own calendars based on my photo-art. I’m keen to get any tips on best methods of dealing with publishers and distributors, so any tips you can give me will be much appreciated. marcdsgn@gmail.com. Thanks.