While the Swiss Post Office does not sell stationery, greeting cards and many other items Government owned Australia Post retail outlets sell, they do sell lottery tickets. I am not sure if lottery products are sold in just some outlets or network wide. I know how newsagents would feel in the government owned Australia Post outlets started selling lottery tickets.
If what I have seen is the case across the country, shopping malls here in Germany usually have just one newsagency. The store in the photo was no more than 60 square metres. The products offered are: magazines (between 700 and 800 titles), Lotto, tobacco products, drinks and not much else.
The cornerstone of the magazine model is range. Two, sometimes three, copies of a title. Very few titles in volume to flat stack.
Talking to the retailers they see their value proposition as range of magazines and being local (convenient).
It is terrific having an opportunity to see these stores up close and to chat to owners or managers (where they speak English). Seeing how a sister channel operates in other countries is part of essential research to navigating our own future.
Footnote. In the mall where I took this photo, I could not find a single greeting card retailer. Some retailers had a spinner of cards, but not the range we see in many stores in each Australian shopping mall.
One of the excuses Australia Post has used in the past for extending the reach of products sold in its network of 800+ government owned post offices is that mail does not pay. The German postal service experienced the same challenge yet solved it in a more logical way. German post offices sell products which are allied to postal services like mobile phone connections. You won’t find books, greeting cards, business stationery, picnic sets, sewing magazines, cameras or ink and toner in German post offices.
Australian Politicians when challenged by small business on competition from Australia Post re-spin the Australia Post line. Successive governments for the last fifteen years have ignored small business and sided with their own protected corporation.
The German postal worker I spoke with a couple of days ago laughed at the range of products sold in Australia. He also wondered how the government could do this to business. Indeed.
I am in Konstanz Germany attending the challenging, exciting and motivating Small Giants International Summit. It was a thrill to discover that the Editor and Publisher of, Dumbo Feather, a terrific independent magazine out of Melbourne are attending the conference as well. Talk about a small world.
The Small Giants organisation grew out of a book, Small Giants, by Bo Burlingham. I read the book when it was first published and highly recommend it. While all the case studies used are US companies, their situations relate to Australia.
Part of Bo’s contribution during the first day of the conference was to discuss, from his perspective of being a journalist working for a magazine (Inc.), the challenges to the print model and how the business needs to react and is reacting to this for its future and the future of the community in which it serves.
What makes this conference different to so many other business conferences is that participants are expected to contribute as much as speakers. We are all learning off of each other … about leadership, business and mojo – what makes a business attractive to others.
The conference is relevant to the challenges newsagents face for it is all about being accountable and stepping into challenges rather than denying their existence.
Check out the magazine display I found in Geneva. It feels like back to the future from an Australian magazine retail perspective. Fascinating and educational.
The store owner at this store said that their customers liked the display this way. They said they had no complaints about finding titles.
I’ll have a bit more to say about the range of magazine displays I have seen over the last few days sometime next week.
Check out the window display at an office products store in Geneva. I thought it may have been on show for nostalgia. Inside they had more typewriters. It brought back memories of toiling on similar devices many years ago. It left me with the feeling that having to work harder to complete a document back then made the result more treasured.
I am in Europe on business and noticed this display at the checkout of a downtown Geneva supermarket a few days ago. Talk about tempting. I love Toblerone. Look at the size of each bar. While in Australia we face cheap packet soup, home brand candy, crumpets and other low value items, apparently in Geneva size does matter when it comes to driving the impulse purchase.
Jokes aside, this display made an impact … like any good retail display does.
Apple has sold 25 million iPads since its launch just over a year ago. I got the sales numbers from Tablets Planet.
The uptake of the iPad has been considerably faster than the uptake of the iPod. Check the agenda for just about every publishing conference and the iPad and tablets more generally are high on the agenda.
There is a push in the UK to have the covers of lads magazines covered. However, as the Press Gazette reported a day ago, newsagents don’t want to foot the bill for the cover up. Fair enough too.
While I have had customers complain about covers of Zoo Weekly, they do have to stray away from more genteel titles before they are faced with the bulging girls.
Magazine publisher Morrison Media has launched a newsagent focus group and is seeking proactive newsagents to participate.
The publisher of frankie, Surfing Life, Slam Skateboatding and Rip Tide is keen to connect with newsagents and get their feedback. The focus group will be conducted via email – meaning no time out of your shop.
This is an excellent initiative. I urge newsagents to participate. Click here to sign up.
We placed the latest issue of Women’s Health & Fitness between New Idea and Woman’s Day earlier this week. It was not selling in its usual location and this current issue should given the free Carman’s breakfast bar which comes with the magazine.
I selected the space between the two popular weeklies on this co-location magazine unit which caps our magazine department in an effort to support the title. I also chose this location so that shoppers can see the value proposition with this issue of the magazine. We will give it this additional space allocation for a week.
The challenge for this issue, I think, is that shoppers cannot see the free breakfast bar. There is a card sticking out of the magazine promoting this but I doubt that shoppers read these cards when browsing a sea of colour and text in the usual newsagency magazine display. That said, I do not have a better option for showing off the free bar.
It is good to see the US Senate permitting the US Federal Reserve to move on credit card processing fees charged by the banks as reported by USA Today.
Newsagents and other small and independent retailers in Australia face an unfair EFTPOS processing regime thanks to the decision by EPAL, the organisation controlled by the major banks plus Coles and Woolworths. Newsagents need to engage to fight for a fairer playing field.
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.
The competition in magazine distribution being offered by Integrated Publishing Solutions, a Fairfax company, will be welcome by proactive newsagents and publishers with a model based on sold copies rather than distributed copies.
Giving newsagents the ability to control supply around some simple business rules is an excellent move on the part of IPS. It demonstrates a trust between IPS and newsagents. It also recognises the imperative that magazines need to sell to be viable in the newsagency channel.
If enough newsagents and publishers embrace the IPS model it could bring about valuable changes in other magazine distribution businesses. They will have no choice but to react commercially.
For too long, the excuse of early return has been used to appease newsagents who complain about oversupply. Early returning is no solution at all given the labour and freight cost as well as the waste.
By engaging the newsagent to set supply gives us the opportunity to make business decisions around magazine range and supply. I welcome this and look forward to IPS coming on stream with XchangeIT later this month and inviting more newsagents to establish direct supply accounts.
The new IPS model could be the best news for newsagents and magazine publishers in decades.
We have been promoting Diabetic Living, Cooking for Diabetes and Dealing With Diabetes with this display behind the counter at one of my newsagencies. Connecting the three diabetes related magazine titles is designed to drive sales, ideally of two or three of the titles in one sale.
I’d encourage newsagents to try promoting titles like this behind the counter. It works. I saw it myself at the weekend when a customer came to the counter with a greeting card and a newspaper. They purchased one of the diabetes related titles on impulse from the behind the counter display … nice incremental business, delivering a more valuable basket in this instance.
This type of display is easy to do. All it took was to bring the titles together and create something which is visually eye catching and at a good height to attract shopper attention at the counter.
I’d note that it is through displays such as this that newsagents can show off their point of difference. You will not see displays like this in supermarkets or convenience stores.
The My Kitchen Rules cookbook from Pacific Magazines has been a huge success for us, selling considerably more than the initial allocation and proving, once again, the power of the food category. The work we put in tactically with the title paid off in excellent impulse business.
We knew the title would be a hit and did everything possible to leverage it to the max.
Not all newsagents did this. I was talking with one newsagent who early returned the title. Their arguments were that they thought it would not sell and that space was tight. I was shocked to hear this. The TV show was a runaway success. The cookbook launch was promoted heaving during the show. The only space needed was a simple stand next to newspapers. That’s why we did and it worked a treat.
Newsagents need to have a process in place for managing early returns. Yes, we need to early return some titles which are failing or which have been oversupplied. But beore you do this, check your data. Don’t cut yourself out of business and it is only your bank balance which suffers.
One way to better manage early returns is to consider the publisher. Some publishers publish better titles than others. Some operate a model based on sales while others operate based on copies distributed. Get to know the difference.
The new Apps from Fairfax for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald are better than the News Limited Apps, much better in my view. Indeed, I rate it as the best Australian newspaper App at the moment.
I like the navigation. I also like the attention to photos and video (although there could be more of this) – this is a great way to show off the difference between the iPad platform and print. I had scanned the print edition yesterday before looking at the App and there is no doubt that the App was more enjoyable because of more consistent production quality.
The technology bells and whistles aside, the future of any news App will come down to the value perceived by the consumer. If Fairfax produces content which reports without fear of favour, which does not try and run political agendas itself (like Fairfax is currently doing with Vic. Police matters) and which leverages the flexibility and immediacy of the digital platform then I am far more likely to be drawn to it over print and over any App from a publisher not ticking these boxes.
I still rate the App from APN for The New Zealand Herald as my favorite newspaper App but The Age App is a close second.
I’d encourage all newsagents with an iPad to download the currently free App and play, check out the competition.
Will I pay for a subscription? Hmm, too early to say. However, I’d note that I do not currently pay for any newspaper or magazine Apps as I am not using my iPad for this type of content. The only content I am purchasing is music and books.
On the Apps more generally, I wish they would use digital media to grow their audience than using the already challenged print medium.
We are promoting both covers of the latest issue of Slam Skateboarding magazine with next to each other pockets. The goal is to draw more attention to the title.
Slam Skateboarding is more than another skater magazine. Giving this title prominence demonstrates a commitment to the skateboarding community, a community of which the magazine is an important and supportive part. There is further excellent information abut the title at the Morrison Media website.
We will continue to seek out Australian titles with good connections to their special interest community around which we can build a better connection to our community.
I am grateful to the colleague newsagent who suggested this approach to displaying the latest issue of The Australian Women’s Weekly. By placing the back cover next to the front cover we have a display which is more compelling and a display which is attracting more browsers. It gives me a buzz when I see someone notice the display from across the mall and walk across to browse the title. Getting a shopper to change their route is a core goal of any display, especially one out the front of a retail business, facing into the mall.
On this issue of AWW itself, it is traveling well. A Royal Wedding related cover was going to be a challenge given the rapid decline in interest among shoppers. The quite different look for AWW is helping position it away from the event itself to browsers.
We are promoting the latest issue of Prevention magazine with this aisle end display facing onto our dance floor.
The larger format magazine, now regular size, is helping Prevention achieve better placement in-store based on what I have seen in my travels.
In addition to this aisle-end display, we have Prevention located in its usual location with women’s health related titles. Once this feature display comes down, we will co-locate the title, probably with weeklies for a week or two.
Apple’s new iIOS 5 operating system includes a new newsstand feature which: organizes your magazine and newspaper app subscriptions in Newsstand: a folder that lets you access your favorite publications quickly and easily. Click on the image for more details on what you are going to be able to do on your iPad and iPhone.
While Apple has come late to the newsstand space, it’s here now and on a mission, just as it was six years ago on the iPod device platform.
Newsagency franchise group Supanews has submitted a bid with the Administrator of REDgroup Retail (Borders, Angus & Robertson and Calendar Club) to purchase the Angus & Robertson franchise
network and related Angus & Robertson assets including corporate A&R stores, website and intellectual property.
Supanews has written to A&R franchisees to inform them of the move and note that they would not move on the offer unless at least 40 A&R franchisee stores agree to transfer to the new network.
My understanding is that the proposal is contingent on Supanews buying back the share of Supanews which is currently owned by REDgroup Retail.
While newsagents would benefit from the ultimate collapse of Angus & Robertson, I’d note that a takeover by Supanews makes sense for both A&R and Supanews. They have been kind of corporate colleagues for some time. They are also both full franchise operations.
The letter sent to A&R franchisees yesterday is inviting in the financial and other terms it indicates would be on offer should the proposal to the administrator be successful.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Given the announcements last week from REDgroup Retail administrators, there is not much time to cut a deal.
We are promoting the latest issue of Australian T3 magazine with this tactical counter impulse purchase display. It is a simple display designed to be seen by newspaper purchasers – it is located where all newspaper shoppers in our store will see the title.
Australian T3 is the a terrific gadget magazine, appealing to fans of smartphones, TVs, Blu-rays, music, apps, computers and games. We figued that promoting the title was a good way to connect with these popular products which are purchased outside the newsagency space.
We know from retail sales data that gadgets are popular with consumers. Canon Digital Lifestyle Index tells that Australian consumers spent $6.8 million on gadgets in 2010. This suggests that a gadget magazine in the right location should sell well. Hence our placement at a high impact impulse purchase location.
I encourage newsagents to dig out the new issue of Australian T3 (on sale yesterday) and place it in a good location.
We have Miley Cyrus Forever on display at the counter, between two register positions, in the location from which we sold a ton of the Justin Bieber magazines.
From Pacific Magazines, the same publisher as for the successful Bieber title an timed to coincide with Miley Cyrus tour fever, this title should go off like a rocket.
In addition to this prime counter impulse purchase location, we also have the title with Girlfriend and Dolly, the destination location for what we think would be a Miley Cyrus interest shopper.
The counter location is designed to drive sales to parents and young girls with their parents. The co-location is all about the destination shopper.