We are promoting the latest issue of recipes+ magazine with this aisle end display. Sales are not huge for us for this title so we will give is three or four days, probably changing on Friday for a weekend promotion – given current space demands. It’s not all bad news with this short display. We will move the title to a goo impulse location with weekly titles as well as a pocket in with food titles.
I was discussing the magazine supply model with a representative of a magazine distribution business recently who was arguing that full retail real estate costs should not be apportioned to the magazine department as if it were a profit centre of thee business.
The argument was that magazines pulled in traffic and that this presented newsagents with an excellent opportunity for other sales. It was put that the full rent for the magazine space should not be applied to the magazine department cost centre because of this traffic pull.
Maybe, just maybe, prior to deregulation and the direct supply to petrol, convenience and other outlets this argument about traffic may have had some merit to at least consider. Today, definitely not.
More than 50% of magazines are sold outside newsagencies. While they do generate traffic, this has declined considerably since deregulation.
My newsagent sales benchmark data shows that magazines are sold alone around 50% of the time. That is, around 50% of people purchasing a magazine purchase other products at the same time.
While I accept that the efficiency of magazines is very much up to newsagents and their retail skills, there is no case to argue that magazines are effectively a loss leader for newsagents. Rent and labour costs are too high.
It is entirely appropriate that the magazine department operates as a cost centre. This is why it must stand or fall on its results. It is why I will continue to factor in retail real estate costs when I undertake magazine title cash flow analysis.
To magazine distributors and publishers who say that an assessment of the profitability of a title should not include the cost of retail space occupied by the title – I say you are wrong. Walk in my shoes for a year, pay the rent, labour and other costs. You will soon see that while magazines are important, they MUST pay their way … every title must pay their way.
In too many Australian newsagencies, there are magazines which are not paying their way – they are riding off the coattails of top selling and profitable titles.
I am concerned that lack of attention by newsagents, publishers and magazine distributors to this will irreparably harm the newsagency channel. We all need the magazine department to be a good profit contributor to newsagents.
Frustrated with your bank? That’s the heading on The Australian newspaper here at Sydney airport this morning. Actually, it is not the headline. It is an ad. A four page wrap around ad which one has to remove and discard to get to the newspaper. So much for the front page of the newspaper selling the news. Those were the days … when news mattered.
Now there are cat lovers and cat haters. Cat lovers make good customers. I know that from my calendar sales. To leverage this interest in cats in my store I’ve sourced this range of cat themed gift items. Tins and the like, all targeting the cat lover. We have them on display, showing the full range this week. Next week, with more space available, they will be placed to drive impulse purchases.
We have refreshed our ACP cookbook offer with this ACP supplied display unit facing on to the dance floor. This feature location display is in addition to an excellent display with food titles in our magazine department. This feature location promotion will remain in place for a week. We will then refresh the range of ACP cookbook titles before using the display unit for another selection of ACP titles.
Card shoppers see this display and this helps drive sales of cookbook titles as birthday and other gifts – something which is less likely to happen if you leave the titles in the magazine aisle.
Every impulse purchase helps.
I have enjoyed tremendous success with boxed Christmas cards over the years. The keys are to get in early (immediately after Father’s Day), to promote cards with a charity connection and to display them on trestle tables.
The suppliers I like and which have worked well for me are: Simson Cards (brilliant design range and excellent charity selection), Cardpac (brilliant range and a Peter Mac Hospital connection), Charity Greeting Cards (good charity support) and Hallmark Cards (not so good charity connection last year but much better this year).
I have had no trouble competing with supermarkets and majors as they take a different approach to boxed Christmas cards. They tend to not go out as early. Also, their range is usually more limited.
The Queensland Newsagents Federation recently published power saving advice which could inadvertently lead to newsagents to causing computer problems for themselves. Do not change power settings on your computer until you check with your computer supplier that doing so will not impact on your use of the system.
While the QNF recommended power saving options for a computer screen, a non computer literate newsagent made setting changes on the computer which caused system challenges.
Any supplier or association providing computer settings advice to newsagents should run this by newsagency software companies first.
Magazine publishers who want to extract cash from old stock which did not see the first time around might want to consider the retro market. Given the interest in all things retro at the moment, go into the warehouse and find your oldest stock (it would need to be ten preferably more, years old) and consider packaging this for newsagents as a retro offer. This would not work with all categories. I’d see it working best with: food, fashion, home and living.
Given that fashions change quickly in some areas, retro items could be just a few years old. Take food. Given the current interest in this category, driven by many new readers, there may be a market for five year old food titles.
Likewise there could be an interest in return visits of other titles.
The way I would do this if I was in a publishing business is that I would create a website of my inventory and invite newsagents to directly order. Proactive newsagents building a point of difference would use the website to help drive their pint of difference.
The current magazine supply push model encourages newsagents to not engage in expanding their range and specialising in certain categories. If only publishers and distributors would realise that there are some proactive newsagents out there who would use a pull model if it was made available to them.
I don’t know if my retro idea would work or even if enough stock is in warehouses to make it work. What I do know is that a radical re-thinking of the magazine push model could deliver a better publisher / newsagent relationship and help newsagents reinstate their position as the local magazine specialists.
Morrison Media, the publishers of frankie magazine has advised their their Morrison News communication blog that stocks of the popular are available to be reordered by newsagents who have sold out. We are certainly reordering for one of my stores.
With a third of all newsagencies stocking frankie regularly selling out, getting extra stock while it is available from the warehouse makes sense. Who knows, you could achieve double digit growth … which would be great news in the magazine sales climate.
If you don’t have the current issue of frankie on your shelves, call Gotch today.
We are following the placement advice of Pacific Magazines and placing Women’s Health magazine in with our women’s interests titles. See the photo from our women’s section. This is a co-location for us as we also support the title at the front of the store – usually either with a feature display or in a pocket placement with our impulse weekly titles. Pacific has completed research which indicates that the title performs well when located next to women’s interest titles, such as marie claire.
The New York Times has a report suggesting that the Nook colour e-reader is very popular among female magazine readers.
The Nook Color has surprised publishers of women’s magazines like O, The Oprah Magazine, Cosmopolitan and Women’s Health by igniting strong sales that rival — and in some cases surpass — sales on the iPad.
While the iPad is more a guy device, the Nook and other readers appear to be more used by women. I say this based on my unscientific observations at airports.
The ABC polled newsagents about climate change for The World Today radio program.
While it is good they asked newsagents, unfortunately we could only report what shoppers say. Too many take on opinions they are told to hold by preaching media outlets. This would not happen in all media delivered fair and balanced reporting in my view.
UK publisher Panini released the Royal Wedding Souvenir Sticker Collection in the UK. From what I can see, it was eleased prior to the wedding. if so I would be surprised to see this in Australia – unless, of course, it has been and I didn’t get it. I guess it depends on UK sales and the excess stock they may have.
That said, this is the type of product for which newsagents could indicate inventory requirements in advance of shipment from overseas and thereby help the publisher and distributor gauge interest for forecast an efficient supply to newsagents. While initially with such a process there would be a disconnect between actual sales and forecast sales through a newsagent driven ordering process, enough data would be gathered over time to enable more accurate prediction of the quantity required for such items.
The process of managing pre-orders could be easily handled online.
I have raised the opportunity of pre-orders with distributors and publishers and while there is interest, I am not yet seeing action on this front.
I received calls from advisers to two politicians on Friday. They wanted to talk about the EFTPOS issue and let me know that they are working to represent newsagent concerns. One was from the office of a Labor MHR and the other from a Liberal MHR. While neither had good news, that the issue remained on their agenda and that they were lobbying on behalf of newsagents and other small and independent retailers was good news. They each said they would continue to push for us.
A story published by the Courier Mail a few days ago shows how Woolworths is using credit card processing to define a point of difference. Imagine what they will do when they can pitch they they don’t charge a surcharge for EFTPOS when we do.
Click here for a copy of the briefing paper which the ANF has given permission to publish.
Click here for a copy of a letter developed by the ANF and which which you can personalise and send to your local member of parliament and senators for your state or territory.
Click here for a list of house of representatives members and here for a list of senators. With this information you can easily, call, email or write to your local parliamentarians and get them engaged on this issue.
We migrated our front of store Men’s Health display to this in-location display for this week.
Men’s Health is a beacon title – it makes sense to use the title itself to let shoppers know where it and related men’s fitness and health titles are located in-store.
We are able to leave in-location displays up for a longer period than front of store premium space displays. This helps us extract sales through the on-sale and beyond just the first week when most other retailers promote a title.
We have been promoting the latest issue of Wheels magazine with this aisle-end in-location display. It caps the aisle in such a way that it is noticed as people enter and leave the men’s magazine aisle.
While not a billboard display or even displaying the whole of the poster, it is effective and captures the energy of this issue of Wheels.
As I have noted previously, we are able to maintain this display in the usual location for the title than if it were in a busier location in-store.
Read what A Turner wrote at digihub, a Fairfax hosted online news and opinion portal, a couple of days ago about what prompted their move from buying magazines at a newsagency to moving to digital editions.
What will it take for you to abandon printed magazines?
I confess I like to hold a good magazine – reading a glossy magazine is a subtly tactile experience. I like the feel of the pages. The sound as they turn. I even like the smell. But the days of printed magazines are numbered.
I wasn’t in a rush to switch to electronic magazines, but my local newsagent pushed me over the edge. I’d previously cancelled my magazine subscriptions because more often than not the magazines wouldn’t turn up in the post. Instead I preferred to drop by the local newsagent once a week for a coffee with the owner and to peruse the magazine stand for publications of interest. It was a good arrangement, but one that wasn’t destined to last.
The local paper shop which supplies magazines to my newsagent recently changed hands and the flow of magazines dried up. In frustration I turned to my iPad for solace. I found most of the magazines I wanted for less then the cost of the print version – some use Zinio, others their own standalone iPad app.
Read the rest of Turner’s post here.
I am suspicious of this story and would like to know the name of the retail and distribution newsagents so that I can verify the facts for myself. That said, does A. Turner not know that we have more than 4,000 retail newsagencies in Australia? Did they try another store?
The story feels a little too convenient for me. That said, if the story as published by Fairfax is accurate then it indicates that it does not take much for Turner to be led from a medium he clearly enjoys.
Yes, people are migrating from print to digital – some completely and some to enjoy the two mediums. I doubt that people are migrating because of lack of satisfaction with their local newsagent.
Here is the rear of the display I wrote about yesterday. Here, we have a small selection of country themed magazines on display. As more titles come in which fit the theme, we will add them to the display – without cluttering it. On the sides on the display, we have country themed cookbooks. We know from our work on similar exit displays that they work, especially when well themed.
As I wrote on May 10, we ordered more of the Justin Bieber one-shot. We received ten on the 16th and as of yesterday had sold seven of those. Just when we thought sales would slow, there is no sign of this. That we have stock of this title generates word of mouth for us among local Bieber fans.
We have used a visual merchandising specialist to create this display at the front of one of my newsagencies this week. The display faces into the shopping mall. It is designed to draw shoppers from the mall to the store to browse … and shop.
We wanted to demonstrate a diversity of product. Diversity from what one sees in a newsagency and diversity from what is on show elsewhere in the centre. We also refuse to engage in the SALE mentality which has so many retailers under a spell right now.
In person, the display is inviting, warm and compelling. It connects with bears, homewares, gifts and country themes. We think it will attract shoppers who will find other products in-store which appeal to them.
I watched last night as shoppers were drawn to and interacted with the display. While it had only been up for a few hours at that stage it was working.
This is what we need to do, play outside the traditional newsagency square and engage in professional retailing to take us from being the forgotten retail channel to something which is exciting, professional and enjoyable for today.
We are promoting A ROYAL SOUVENIR from ACP magazines at the counter between our two daily newspapers as well as at the front of the newsagency facing into the mall and with our weekly magazines. We have The Australian Women’s Weekly next to this as the souvenir is a brand-extension of AWW making such placement logical. Calling the publication a souvenier is smart as I think we are in that market now where people are more likely to buy a Royal Wedding product as a keepsake than for news.
On one of my rare shifts on the counter I enquired why a regular buyer of the Daily Telegraph had after decades, switched to the Sydney Morning Herald. His response was that he had a ‘gutfull’ of biased reporting. Later when I made enquires of the counter staff it seems that we lost at least one, perhaps two subscription sales for the same reason. Both it seems were thought to be solid labour supporters.
This is what a newsagent recently commented to other newsagents. My experience is that Iam more likely to get a negative comment on a cover story on a News Limited newspaper than a Fairfax newspaper. News has less news and more attack for the sake of attack in its lead stories.
An older customer a few months ago explained that he only bought the Herald Sun every so often to find out what Rupert thought – other than that, it’s not news he said.
Amazon announced yesterday that it now sells more Kindle e-books than print books (hardcover and paperback combined). Extraordinary since the Kindle as a medium was launched just four years ago.
This is disruption in action. What we see happening with books will come to other print products. Maybe at a different pace and affecting some title niches more than others. But it will come.
US stationery giant Staples has moved to expand its staples.com.au online stationery business across Australia. Here is the press release they have issued today about the move:
STAPLES.COM.AU EXPANDS ACROSS AUSTRALIA
May 20, 2011, Sydney: Staples.com.au has announced plans to expand its online business into Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania. The expansion follows its recent launch into New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory.
Offering a wide range of office products, Staples is dedicated to making it easy for small businesses to buy office products online.
The expansion to three new states sees staples.com.au now servicing 68 per cent of the small business population, a potential of more than half a million small businesses. Staples plans to continue its national roll out over the coming months.
Richard Haigh, head of staples.com.au, believes Staples can offer a truly differentiated service by focussing on the needs of customers:
“We are committed to listening to our customers and what they want. When we launched in Australia we knew that customers wanted an easy to use website, fast delivery and low prices so that’s been our main focus since Staples.com.au went live.”
“The SME feedback we’ve received so far has been positive; we have to work hard to earn our place as a supplier partner with Australian small businesses and we believe that listening to their needs is the best way to achieve this.”
Staples has developed its service offering in response to extensive research undertaken with the Australian small business community.
While a not unexpected move, many newsagents will be shocked by the move. Staples does online well, having cut its teeth on this in the US.
