We missed a couple of bulks of a weekly title yesterday. We had enough stock to last an hour or so. While we waited to find out when we would get replacement stock, we went to the local supermarket and bought enough stock to last a few hours.
While this approach will affect the accuracy of our XchangeIT data, it is more important to me to have stock on the shelves than to provide accurate sales data.
I would be interested to hear if other newsagents buy stock from supermarkets or elsewhere when deliveries go missing.
it would be great if each magazine and paper delivery run was linked together, via facebook or something, so if you are over or under supplied, you just post a message and other people can go see if their delivery is wrong. at least then if you find your bundles have been thrown off in the next suburb, you can have them back onto your shelves after a quick drive before you run out, and before the distributors start answering the phones. crisis averted.
i spoke to one of my neighbouring stores about this a montha ago, and he wasnt interested….. seems he likes to call all the stores along the run, wasting his time and ours….
I just go straight to woolies . i first do the ring around BUT no one ever has them . NDC are always to keen to give a another supply but the next issue comes out before they turn up and GG like to investigate it first which by the time they decide to reorder it is way to late
We have our drivers contact number and phone him first when complete bundles are missing. Sometimes he still has them onboard and drops them off.
I have a few issues with buying in stock from supermarkets, the post office etc, maybe to the detriment of customer service, but I don’t like giving my competitors easy sales for a no profit sale at my end. It costs to have staff buy the items from the supermarket, costs to sell the item, and loses money on the transaction, although I can acknowledge there are benefits with popular magazine titles and would consider doing this for say Woman’s Day, Better Homes and garden and like titles.
Brendan i would only do it for the weeklys i figure it is better woolies get my money than my customers giving them there . i feel there is more to loose than the profit for one day of a few magazines if the customer has to go else where .
We never buy from supermarkets – we don’t want to encourage mag suppliers to push titles onto their shelves. We always contact the distributors first and if they can’t be found we transfer stock between our two shops or talk nicely to other newsagents we know.
We have found that most issues can be resolved by speaking to our delivery driver and the distribution depot.
no in a million years i will buy a replacement in wollies or coles. why not buy from your fellow newsagents , Mark? none of us we ever sold out weeklies anyway.
Eric i don’t know about other agents but with weeklys i always just have enough for my self so another agent coming inb and buying a couple of bundles would not be an option . i would definantly help out where possible (which happens a lot ) but as far as handing over a bulk pack it would not be possible . the replacments do not get here on time . so i don’t see why not drain woolies supply
We buy newspapers from woolies when we sell out as Qld Newspapers quite often do not have extras. People come to us first so I do not want to give them any reason to go elsewhere especially Woolies.
i used to buy of wollies but now when i get low i move them to the back of the store
Used to borrow from another newsagent but they werent interested in helping . On occasion have been able to borrow from supermarket as they are oversupplied, if our stock doesnt turn up then go pay them. But this doesnt sit well with some managers. But as we are in a small shopping strip we tend to try to help each other instead of competing