Newsagents are frustrated that they have been unable to access sufficient Woman’s Day stock this week to meet demand while nearby supermarkets have had plenty of stock of this popular issue.
Newsagents I know received an increase of between 15% to 16% in supply of Woman’s Day. One major supermarket representative I spoke with said they received an increase of 45%, claiming this was across the board.
If these numbers accurately reflect allocations for the Woman’s Day Royal Wedding issue, newsagents have every right to be frustrated.
I understand that the Royal Wedding presented unique and considerable challenges to ACP and other publishers. It also presented tremendous opportunities for all of us in the magazine supply chain to do good business and attract some new customers with a hope that some of these would stick.
I would like disclosure of the allocations increase for supermarkets and newsagents for Woman’s Day. I would like to know if supermarkets received an allocations increase more than twice the size of that provided to newsagents.
I visited a Woolworths supermarket early yesterday morning and took this photo of their display. While they had sold out of Woman’s Day, this stand was full for almost two days as were plenty of other pockets in-store. They did a bumper trade. The nearby newsagent was out of stock from early Tuesday.
The photo is important for a few reasons – the amount of stock on display, the difference between this display and the display unit provided to newsagents and the terms under which this display was provided to supermarkets.
My supermarket contact told me that this display unit was placed at a cost to ACP, that the supermarket groups which took the display were paid a fee for the price location placement. If true, this demonstrates a significant difference to the financial terms under which supermarkets trade for magazines compared to newsagents. However, that it not my core concern. No, my core concern is about stock. We can’t sell what we don’t have.
Newsagents are told by magazine publishers that our channel is vitally important. The allocations increase by ACP of Woman’s Day this week appears, if my numbers are accurate, to fly in the face of such claims.
We sell more magazines in our channel than any other single retail channel in Australia. This should have seen us provided a bigger increase than a smaller channel, supermarkets.
The only way any newsagent supplier should demonstrate the value of our channel to their business is in their business decisions. This is how newsagents should judge suppliers, by their actions.
ACP will say that it is easier to deal with supermarkets in that you can negotiate with a couple of national offices and cover off around 2,000 stores whereas with newsagents you have to deal with 4,000 owners for 4,000 stores. While I can appreciate that, I ask at what cost? What do supermarkets do for the suppliers – nothing unless they are paid. What do newsagents do – plenty without being paid. We do more to promote and engage with brands and magazines than supermarkets every day.
I am sure, too, that there are other factors at play here, factors which I will not see from my small business perspective. ACP needs to do what it needs to do for its business. Newsagents need to do what is right for our business. If I am right on the allocations increase percentages for this week’s Woman’s Day then I don’t feel as strategic to ACP as I did a week ago.
If I was ACP, I would have backed newsagents ahead of supermarkets, with a 40% increase in supply. I would have given supermarkets a 20% bump. My justification would be that newsagents are more important to my future – they are more flexible, more engaged with my products, more important to the overall health of the magazine channel and cost me less to deal with.
I don’t know if the supermarkets asked for the 40% (or more) increase or if its was just offered. The net result is that in this week of a huge spike in shopper engagement with magazines, newsagents were left looking like the poor cousins of supermarkets. That is not a healthy situation for our businesses or for the magazine marketplace as a whole.
I see they have not one loaf of bread on the shelf but yet heaps of magazines .
In all honesty how may would put up a unit like this in their store?
Supply and demand is the key and supermarkets are busier on sunday and open.Many agents aren’t open and don’t have the foot traffic for such an impulse sale.
How can you expect similar deals as the supermarkets get when the industry still has so many relics running stores and destroying our image and industry.So many would not have even bothered pushing harder this week they are what you need to focus on and not the supermarkets.People like them are pushing customers to the supermarket.
On a side not why not have a go at the herald sun for giving away free packets of footy cards to safeway customers who buy a paper,that can’t be good for any of us.Maybe your supermarket insider only tells you what they want you to know…Haven’t you published misleading information on here before from sources that got it wrong.
Mary I was not aware of the Safeway deal..
I am not saying newsagents would want this display unit, just the stock.
I am confident of my numbers.
We sold out of OK on Monday.
Womans Day, New Idea and Grazia by 9:00am Tuesday. AWW on Wednesday before we even got stock to our subagents I know we will get more AWW tomorrow but judging by the list of pre orders for Friday copies we will have not one royal magazine left for the weekend. The woolworths directly next door to us has 3 of the stands that you have photographed Mark plus 2 others similar to the one we recieved. We knew the royal wedding was coming, we knew it was going to be a greeat opportunity to sell magazines. Why not give us the choice to pick our numbers?
Just some feed back on our experience, our mags, as usual, arrived late on Monday because it was a public holiday. (Our courier likes a sleep in on public hols)
Our delivery was short 30 Womans Day, (our usual allocation was not increased.) When I tried to report this online it said it was a ‘known delivery problem’, so I was unable to request replacements. When they didn’t show up on Tuesday, I went online to request replacements, and there were no available supply. It will be interesting what happens with AWW tomorrow!
BUYING W/W FROM COLES WILL TAKE THEM BACK FOR A REFUND WHEN MINE COME
just got email from network, part 2 book Royal Wedding coming out tomorrow, sent reply hoping small newsagencies get some this time or are they going to cisciminiate again.
sorry should have read ‘disciminate’
DR, had a chuckle to myself, not entirely ethical but clever. The levels we must stoop to just to get ahead……
Mark, I think some of your copies of Woman’s Day may have gone overseas too. I counted 40 on sale at just one newsagent at Singapore’s Changi Airport a few hours ago. From memory I don’t recall seeing that many copies at the same outlet in the past.
You are about to get the same with the New Idea Royal Spl ,we are getting enough stock for about 1 hour .Will be over checking the supepmarket.A C P got this so wrong to much faith in the coles and co ,what i have found over my 35 years people go the the newsagent first as we are the expected to have that spl mag
As well as the woolworths next to us to us receiving their allocation of womans day on Sunday for some reason their allocation of Sunday mail was increased by 100 copies.After speaking to their manager ,he was admant that head office had increased their papers due to coverage of the royal wedding,by the way they returned 105 copies of sunday mail.This tells me that they dictate all terms with their suppliers be it acp or
The real issue here is there is no trust between the Magazine distributors and newsagents.
I am new to the business so I do not know what newsagents have done in the past to contribute to the current atmosphere.
What I do know however is that the distribution companies completely control our business. They send us what they want, when they want. And the communication in between is sometimes inept or at least lacking in clarity.
What might resolve the current diliemma is a 2 tier agency system. Tier 2 could be similar in operation to what we have today and be for newsagents who don’t wish to prioritise their magazine business stream.
A tier one newsagent could be one who agrees to higher standard of performance and operations and in return gets to play a greater role in the business plan, as a more equal business partner (with regular consultation) with the magazines’ publishers and distribution companies.
Just an early thought but happy to participate in further discussion.
Mark thank you for raising this issue. It is a big challenge we face – relevance as a retail channel. If we don’t have stock then we are not relevant. In my own situation the Woolworths had the stand like in your photo. They had Woman’s day until Thursday morning. I was out by Tuesday morning and Network could not / would not supply more. This made me look second class.
I do not want to come off like a conspiracy theorist but I wonder if this is the plan.
I support your calls for ACP to respond on their scale out model for this issue. I doubt they will respond.
Thanks again for raising this.
Mary, speaking from Supermarket Industry experience, and experience in the brand News Link, suppliers not only pay for space and provide significantly better terms to the majors including News Link (as they are considered by suppliers as a major), they even pay staff to do magazine returns….. YES this is what occurred at NewsLink.
This is what the major retailers ACTUALLY get….why do they get it??? Because they say to suppliers such as Coca Cola, Arnott’s, Cadbury, and yes ACP and Pacific Magazines…..if you want your product placed here then you pay for it. If not we will put another product there that will sell. The big retailers tell these suppliers what the terms are, so i guess they screw newsagents because they get screwed at the other end.
Actually most supermarkets are pretty sloppy with the way they run the paper and magazine business. Their arrival areas are inept . They never know what they’ve got or where it is. Their returns management is just appalling. Actual returns are usually far greater than the returns form numbers (guess who gets the advantage out of that). Good luck to the publishers if they want to rely on this nunch of bozos for theor retail future !
THE SERVO’S ARE FULL OF WOMENS WEEKLY
Amanda is close to the answer. Publishers pay more attention to Supermarkets because if the category is not in growth in their stores they will simply reduce the space within store! It has already happened at Woolies at the checkouts.
If mags are not in growth in newsagencys, the newsagency closes! BIG DIFFERENCE.
Also Mark your comment “Newsagents are more important to my future” is laughable! We all know Newsagencies are dying out, and it seems the publishers do too.
Jake T, newsagencies are not dying, consolidating maybe but not dying. Indeed many are growing.
Jake & Mark are 100% correct.
Those who do not keep up will ultimately dissappear, those who who do keep up and diverse will ultimately survive and possibly benifit from future closures.
“Country” Newsagents maybe a different story, still a hard slog but have a good chance of surviving if they do not have too much competition.
As I read and watch from afar, this channel will be very diverse – Supermarkets, Australia Post and Convenience Sevice Stations will provide ongoing challenges especially in NSW if Lotto and associated products move into these and other possible outlets.
I think it is a shame that magazine specialists are becoming harder to sustain because Newsagents cannot afford the magazine distribution model.
I really hope Newsagents do not have to start selling Kebabs as part of their ongoing diversity.
Nah, Derek – coffee’s easier LOL
Easier x 50 with a selfish interest attached and better margin than magazines I believe.
I apologise for implementing this comment here, but its on the subject of Woolworths and i am unsure how to add a new topic of interest.
My “beef” is with Woolworths selling ALL the Daily Telegrpah Cookbooks at once to customers before they are even supposed to be on sale. I have a Woolworths 30metres away from my store and I am selling the Cookbooks according to how they should be sold. Yet the Woolworths are selling the whole set (supplied so far) with the purchase of a single Telegraph.
What can be done about this?
Possibly WW are doing it their way in exchange for warehousing.
We’re getting sick of News’ costcutting via getting newsagents to do all the storage for their promo items. We’ve had cookbooks for weeks, now, and the promo doesn’t even start for another week or two.
we have this problem with our neighbouring newsagent, he does this with all promos….
we do it properly because it generates traffic