We bought 100 copies of the latest Melway street directory in the lead up to Father’s Day 2011. Sales were okay but not great. Ten days before Christmas 2011 we decided to make this an in-store hero product. That is, we only promoted it in-store – i.e. not in a catalogue or any external marketing. We struck a price which gave us just a few dollars margin. Our goal was to drive impulse purchases. It worked. We sold more than 60 copies. Most were basket extension purchases.
Too often I talk with newsagents who complain that a product is not selling and that they are stuck with it. It’s our job as retailers to do everything possible to move the product in our shops. This means trying different locations and different price points – for the products over which we have price control.
Okay so we didn’t make as much as we would have liked from the Melway product. So what?! We moved the stock, make more than 60 customers happy and provided them with a value retail experience which we hope counts for something when they think about us in the future.
We are constantly looking at our stock, moving it, repricing it and making sure that it is not weighing our business down. We do not see our newsagency as a dumping ground for products which don’t sell.
We do quite well with the UBDs here but it’s quite funny as to how dramatic a difference it makes as to where they are placed in the shop. I bought 3 cartons of the new edition before Christmas and with all the regular Christmasy stuff at the front of the shop they were down the back on a shelf with the result that we sold a single copy up till the 23/12. As we had alot more room up the front due to strong sales of our Christmas stock I move them up the front where I normally like to display them and have sold through all but one copy as of yesterday. Great for us considering our size and location with good margin. The UBDs always seem to be a great basket builder with people picking them up and spending $30 on impulse.
I was once told that there are three things you can do with product. Sale it at a profit, sell it at a loss or throw it away. You illustrate here that one needs to be flexible when faced with a challenge like this.
Thanks Steve. I think that market and economic conditions here in Australia require us to be more active retailers than ever, constantly moving stock and our people in pursuit of sales. I think we have spent too long accepting that stock can sit on the shelves for too long.
Off topic a little…but can anyone recommend a supplier with good quality and range of $2 cards…i currently sell only artwrap $2 cards which go great,but i want to expand my offering and would be grateful for any suggestions
Twice a year I have what I call a “bring out the dead sale” not that we tell customers that 😉 I usually do it in peak tourist seasons to offload the old stock, anything faded, shop soiled etc. Apparently the last two newsagency owners never had sales or marked down stock, but I believe like you say Steve, better to cut your losses and sell for what you can get rather than have it get throw away! In a small country town this is quite important as the locals all know what you’ve had on the shelf unsold for the last year or so.
People still use paper maps??? :-S
Oh well, I suppose it’s one step up from parchment scrolls and a compass 😛
ha ha Jarryd, don’t underestimate the number of people who still want to know where they are, even after they’ve successfully arrived lol ! Maps and directories are a real winner in my store – I suppose because no-one else stocks them any more.
we have trouble selling them not because they don’t sell well, but those st. dir. have legs can walk out the door without being watch.
It must be a demographics thing. We cant even sell them from an impulse location. Stopped stocking them 2 or 3 years back.
Re Street Directories growing legs, ours are right next to the front counter in a map stand, and only one on display at a time, which is replaced after a sale. I watch the high dollar value items like a hawk, my staff reckon I can smell as sale from home lol ! I put in a small range of Lonely Planet guides too in Nov and have sold seven out of eight ( no-one from here going to China – yet !)
I think most of ours were purchased as gifts. With access to digital maps now ubiquitous – TomTom, phones etc – I do think there is no upside. We were lucky.
We sell lots of maps to people who have a gps but still want to refer to a paper map. I suspect this is partly because a gps tells you where to go as opposed to being able to see the starting point and destination and selecting a route you wolud like to travel. As a motor bike rider, a gps would never select the roads we prefer to travel for the joy of it.
Brendan,
A select few of the dedicated GPS systems allow you to select routes. But Google Maps (probably the most common phone-based GPS) certainly does. You can even use Street View to look at the street as if you were driving down it!
I’ve got a gps that does that Jarryd but it’s a poor tool for planning a route and is used to input the route after looking at a normal map. I’m not talking about a 100K trip, more like 500-600K in a day.
As in my above post, I get similar comments from some customers. One size does not fit all in this matter.
A 4.5″ TFT screen cannot give the planning capabilities of a full size map or a street ditectory.
A small screen may not be the best tool to plan a route, however with Google Maps one can use a tablet or any normal computer with a screen likely larger than any street directory.
I’m going to make the assumption that the price of street directories can only rise significantly in the comming years. Continued production decline will inevitably mean printing them becomes unviable.
just like newspapers, magazines and books
You’re probably right and eventually they won’t be printed bur we can they can and I bet will be downloaded and printed by plenty of people when required.
we are along a tourist route and quite often we pull out maps to show people where they are and which direction they need to head, then we say “would you like to buy the map now, so you get there safely”and they often reply, “no its alright, i have a GPS in the car, it just doesnt……..(insert excuse)”
which is why i belive maps will always have a huge place in regional australia.
we do sell a few paper maps, so it’s not a huge loss.
i think dedicated gps units will feel the effects of the smart phones and apps that will replace them.