I am disappointed that the XchangeIT help desk will be closed next week. This speaks to their care for newsagents and their seriousness about providing good customer service. For newsagents, next week is a regular week with magazine deliveries, challenges over getting invoice files and questions on sending sales and returns data back. With the XchangeIT help desk closed the newsagency software companies will, again, provide cover.
Until recently, when a staff member scanned a non winning lottery ticket on the Golden Casket terminal, no wins, customer to retain ticket for future draws, came up. Now, the message in this circumstance is current dividends not available, customer to retain ticket. Employees and customers are confused by the different message. I can understand why.
A newsagent who contacted Golden Casket to explain the confusion was only told that the comments would be passed on to senior management.
The publisher of Women’s Health & Fitness magazine is promoting newsagents as the go to place to purchase the title in their latest email newsletter to people interested in the magazine. This kind of support by publishers direct to people who have registered an interest in their title is terrific for newsagents.
I’d urge more publishers to use their databases, social media connections and other free marketing platforms to promote newsagents as the go-to retailers for their titles. I’d urge newsagents to support titles promoted in this way in return.
We are supporting Women’s Health & Fitness with a half waterfall display in-store – at an ideal shopper eight … to make it noticeable to those visiting our women’s magazine aisle. wee wanted to show off the free bar which is bagged with the magazine. Also, we have placed it between two popular titles to further support the magazine.
We have been promoting the latest issue of Frankie magazine with this artistic aisle-end display which faces the dance floor and toward the front of the shop. I love that our team has again kept the display in line with the style of the magazine.
We also have Frankie in a half waterfall display in the usual location for the title.
Early indications are that this issue will continue to growth trend for the magazine. We have shoppers who come to our shop specifically to purchase Frankie – they like that we always carry the title and respect it as we do. There is a connection with the Frankie reader which we nurture in the way we work with the title. I think they appreciate it.
We have been successfully promoting the latest issue of Diabetic Living magazine with tactical placement next to newspapers, with weekly magazines and, for a few days, at the counter. Diabetic Living responds well to this attention, delivering sales from these high-traffic locations. I even saw one shopper purchase a copy as a Christmas gift.
I’d urge newsagents to check where they have Diabetic Living. If it is with health titles, consider co-locating in a high-traffic location as we do. Count how many you put there so you can see if the location works. I am confident that this small about of attention will deliver incremental business.
There are many ways we can grow magazine sales.
In another example of a brand commitment delivering valuable dividends, we are promoting a range of Smurf branded product as part of our Christmas offer.
Sure enough, the range is selling.
What you can see in the photo is all we have left of Smurf branded product. Sales are sure to be helped along today by The Smurfs: A Christmas Carol which aired on the Seven Network last night.
I notice that grandparents, aunts and uncles tend to go for the branded products as they are a known quantity. In the case of the Smurfs products, there is the nostalgia connection as well.
I received feedback from Brett Carey of newsXpress Deception Bay about a successful and simple marketing campaign he was running on the receipts produced by his newsagency software.
Just had a customer call me. She just read on her receipt that we had cheap Ink and Toner. She had just bought HP02 from Harvey Norman for $19.95 and thought she would check us on price and was stunned that we were at $12.50.
She will buy from us from now on and she will tell all her friends too.
Two minutes work on Tower and $$$’s in the bank.
More newsagents should use this free marketing platform. It’s free and can drive sales.
FYI. This is not a newsXpress campaign, any newsagent with the receipt marketing facility in their software can do it.
Further to my post about Melbourne Home Design + Living, we have one copy left and have switched to this in-location display with sister titles from the publisher. This is a title which would not be on the radar for many newsagents yet it is a title which responds to time in the spotlight as I have mentioned here several times previously.
In our businesses there are many titles which respond to such attention. These are the titles we can use to drive incremental magazine business for our newsagencies.
Magazine range is the most significant point of difference the newsagency channel has yet too often newsagents treat managing magazines as a chore rather than an opportunity. Sales fall beyond average as a result.
Our shops are full of opportunities and this is what I try and embrace with even small engagement like for Melbourne Home Design + Living.
I love this calendar display created at one of my newsagencies by the creative team. It’s facing into the mall and attracting shoppers to the Kimmi Doll calendars we have in stock.
With something like the Kimmi Doll range there is an excellent opportunity to attract shoppers who were not in the market to purchase a calendar but will do so on the basis of the connection to the popular brand. The success we are having is a reminder of the importance of brands, especially at Christmas time when people are buying brands they know the gift recipient likes.
We are continuing to enjoy an excellent diary and calendar season with sales up more than 40% year on year for both. We are still at full price and will be for calendars until January 1, 2012 and for diaries forever – we don’t discount these.
I am disappointed by the retailers, including newsagents, who are discounting calendars right now. There is no need. Okay, maybe the cheap calendars of poor quality could be discounted. But not the quality product, especially that catering to special interests including dog breeds.
I see discounting diaries and calendars right now as a message of weakness from the retailer.
We are doing nothing out of the ordinary:
While there are other outlets selling calendars and even discounting near us, we are having, as I noted, a terrific year.
The digital-first strategy at The Guardian newspaper in the UK is being blamed by the decision to roll some previously separate sections, sports, film & music, into the main newspaper and to cut pages from the overall product.
With News and Fairfax having increased their focus on digital access to content we have to wonder if we will similar moves here. I;d expect so as newspaper publishers continue to chase a model which delivers the best return on the costs of editorial content.
Following discussion here last weekend about the newsagency shingle, I have visited twelve newsagencies in two states over the last few days to see for myself how we treat the newsagency shingle. In short, we treat the shingle badly.
The businesses I saw fall into four types of newsagency businesses:
Old. Old and tired businesses with poor lighting, empty shelves and disinterested people behind the counter.
Cheap. Businesses filled with cheap no-name brand products ranging from toilet paper to stationery. Looking from the front it was hard to tell the type of business. Poor lighting.
General store. Magazines have been cut way back and the shop filled with cheap stationery and gifts but it does not feel quite as bad as the cheap outlet above.
Relevant. A clean if not new(ish) shop-fit, thoughtful magazine layout, brand name focus for stationery and gifts, good lighting and staff in uniforms. A business with a purpose. Not necessarily a sexy looking business but one which certainly looks managed.
Despite the differences, each of these businesses was called a newsagency. There were more in the Relevant category but it is the others which I remember the most.
I am sure that I could visit more and find more groupings. We have evolved into a diverse channel with little connecting our businesses other than the sale of magazines and newspapers.
With newsagent proprietors creating such different businesses it is appropriate that some want to move away from calling their business a newsagency.
We are enjoying extraordinary growth in sales of Better Homes and Gardens magazine. Growth of close to 20%.
We are thrilled not only at the sales but at the excellent return we are getting from simple tactical engagement such as this in-loctaion display for the latest issue of the magazine.
Better Homes and Gardens responds so well to in-store support. We have found it necessary to order more stock so that we can reach our full potential.
Our sales growth shows what we newsagents can achieve – we have two major supermarkets in our centre as well as bother newsagency plus a couple of majors. So we’re not short of competition.
Check out the poster sent out with The Daily Telegraph today, making newsagents part of what I am guessing is a paid for advertising campaign with Coles.
Why would a newsagent put this poster out? Coles sells newspapers. The last thing newsagents need is to drive newspaper shoppers to Coles and feed the uncompetitive supermarket duopoly in this country.
Here is the poster for the Courier Mail newspaper today. No wonder newsagents are not keen to put this out – where’s the news. Publishers used to demand posters out as they sell the news of the day. Not any more apparently.
I’d refuse to put this poster out. It’s not news and none is paying me to be part of a Coles driven advertising campaign.
Clink on the image to see the notice sent by Fairfax to NSW newsagents re the handling of the Sydney Morning Herald over the Christmas period.
As is usual from Fairfax about these things the communication is unclear and the work confronted by newsagents frustrating at a busy time of the year, especially for distribution newsagents.
While newsagency software can handle these distribution challenges, newsagents still need to do some work to set everything up.
I am sure that with a bit of effort Fairfax could have made this much easier for newsagents. This would have been appreciated given the time of the year and the heavy demands on time in a newsagency. Also, these Fairfax bumper editions cause customer frustration – of which newsagents bear the brunt.
At best we sell four copies of each issue of Ironman magazine. A review of the sales history indicates that a fair supply would be no more than six copies. Unfortunately the ‘magazine experts’ at Gordon and Gotch disagree and have increased us from six to eight to ten to twelve copies over the last four issues. There is no apparent reason for the increase in supply to twelve copies in our Ironman magazine sales data. The only excuse I can think of is that Gotch would prefer the excess stock be in our newsagency (and others?) and not in their warehouse.
Click on the image to see the supply and return data for the last twelve issues.
To those at Gotch who think I am picking on them, don’t give me or any other newsagent reason to claim that you oversupply. Start to supply us on equitable terms. Your CEO claimed that you don’t oversupply yet I continue to see evidence of it in my newsagency and other newsagencies I work with.
Newsagents want what magazine publishers want, an equitable supply model which is driven by sales.
You have the data, use it.
We have started carrying FBM – Family Business Magazine and are giving it good positioning in our business titles section. It is physically bigger than an average magazine so we have had to juggle space to fit this odd-size title in. It’s an IPS title so we will give it a run and keep it if we can get an economic return from the investment.
The IPS title roster is helping us extend out reach of special interest titles. This is important as it improves our credentials as a magazine specialist. This is important with two major supermarkets nearby with refreshed magazine departments which only offer the top 200 titles.
We are promoting the latest issue of Home Beautiful magazine with this display at the second entrance to our women’s magazine aisle.
I love what our team has done with the yellow backing of the poster … it works a treat, brings a brightness of the poster out.
Our Home & Lifestyle magazine sales are well up on last year. I think that this is in part due to our regular promotion of key titles in the segment with displays like this as well as good in-location displays.
A report from eMarketer just out claims that Americans are spending more time reading their phones than print.
The table summarises the data gathered for the study which resulted in the report. It’s an interesting read, but no surprise.
Not the difference in the reduction in engagement for newspapers compared to magazines. It’s in line with other moves we see for the two mediums, newspapers are being more affected today by tablets than magazines.
The EDI file for Phantom Christmas 1620 had a price of $3.00. The $A price printed next to the barcode on the cover shows a $A price of $5.50. A call to Gotch has revealed that they have realised the mistake, credited us for the wrong low price and invoiced us for the higher right price. Gotch did this without telling us. In the meantime we have sold copies at the low price. Now we have to chase being compensated for this mistake by gotch.
The lack of communication to newsagents on this is frustrating.
Newsagents should check their Phantom stock and contact Gotch to ensure they are not out of pocket.
UPDATE (12:56PM) : Gotch has advised that they will look into compensating us for the sales we have made at the lower price.
Sky News Australia yesterday published a report declaring that tablet computers and e-readers will kill print. It opened with…
Tablet computers and electronic readers promise to eventually close the book on the ink and paper era as they transform the way people browse magazines, check news or lose themselves in novels.
No mincing of words there. Further down the article gets into some detail:
Newspapers and magazines, however, should read the digital writing on the wall, according to analysts.
‘Newspapers and magazines have different issues,’ Weiner said.
‘Print will wind up extinct for newspapers, while magazines will need to figure out the balance between print and digital,’ he contended.
Newspapers spend lots of money printing and distributing daily editions that can’t be kept as fresh as stories on the Internet.
That’s respected Gartner analyst Allen Weiner they are quoting.
None of this should be a surprise, certainly not regulars here. I don’t see these predictions as a problem as much as I see them as an opportunity. However, it is only an opportunity if we embrace it as such.
I was talking to someone yesterday who was considering buying a newsagency. They wanted to know what I thought of the channel from an investment perspective. I am positive about it and am putting my money where my mouth is. There are plenty of newsagencies delivering excellent year on year growth. Sure there world is changing. The key is to embrace and even chase change.
Check out the poster the folks at the Adelaide Advertiser wanted newsagents to put out the front of their newsagencies last week to promote the newspaper.
So much for the news of the day selling the news.
No wonder some newsagents refused to put the poster out.
Posters provided by newspaper publishers should be for promoting news and not for extending the reach of an advertiser’s campaign for which they pay the publisher. If publishers do want newsagents to become outlets for promoting such deals then they need to negotiate commercial terms with newsagents.
I would refuse to put this poster out in my newsagency.
Following the refusal by the landlord to renegotiate on rent, another newsagent has walked from their major shopping centre tenancy. They left behind a shop-fit which was just three years old. The landlord, following a tradition which emerged in 2011, then negotiated new terms with another party to operate a newsagency in the tenancy.
While some landlords have shown a preparedness to renegotiate terms for newsagents tenants who are doing it tough, many refuse.
When your occupancy costs pass 15% in a shopping centre and continue to rise you are living on borrowed time. The math is simple. With an average gross profit of between 30% and 35%, a labour cost of 12%, rent of 15%, theft of 3% and overheads of 5% there is nothing left to fund business borrowings let alone provide a return to the owner.
Smart landlords understand that much of what is sold in a newsagency is on a fixed margin, at the low end of margins achieved in the shopping centre tenancy mix. They can see that the prices of many products are not even keeping up with CPI (newspapers, magazines, cards). They understand the important role newsagencies play in the tenancy mix and the service they provide. These smart landlords are the ones likely to agree to either a rent reduction or to not applying the usual annual 4% to 6% rent increase.
We need more smart landlords. Otherwise, we will see fewer shopping centres in Australia with newsagencies.
No sooner had we started putting out Cooper, the new interactive plus / book pack from Hallmark and a customer purchased one.
It’s in a terrific location, at the front of the newsagency, facing into the mall. With Jingle selling out thanks to the TVC, it is easier to sell cooper as more people understand the product and how it works … with Cooper interacting as the book is read.
While not Christmas themed, Cooper is set to sell well in the lead up to Christmas. It’s an easy gift to purchase.
Having the Hallmark branding gives confidence. I think shoppers are wary of cheap China product which dies after one or two uses.