Taking an honest look at the performance of a newsagency

My newsagency software company offers newsagents a free newsagency business health check service which provides me an opportunity to look at business data and provide feedback. I have permission from a recent participant to share my feedback to them here. I thought other newsagents may find it interesting.

I looked at 15/2/12 to 15/5/12 compared to the same period for a year earlier.

1. TRAFFIC (CLOSED SALES): Down 3%.
   1. What are you doing to attract new customers and bring existing customers back more frequently.
   2. You need a traffic growth plan.
   3. This can be done even on a low budget.
   4. You have to do something to arrest the decline.
2. SALES: Down 4%.
   1. To have sales fall more that traffic is a worry even by a small amount. It’s a trend you want to arrest.
   2. You need to get shoppers spending more.
   3. Turning browsers into shoppers and getting existing shoppers putting more in their basket.
   4. Again, you need to plan for this.  Every high traffic touch point has to be about getting customers to spend more.
3. CARDS & WRAP. Your results here are worse than the industry average.
   1. I’d get your account manager in and request an immediate range review.
   2. Is your card range current?
   3. Are your cards easily accessible?  Too often newsagents have thinks in front of cards, making the category hard to find and shop.
   4. Do you offer to help customers with cards?
   5. Who puts your cards out? In my shops my staff do this. They learn more about the cards that way.
4. TOBACCO. Slight decline. better than average I am seeing.
   1. While you can’t market the range you can manage it for efficiency.
   2. Make sure you reorder using the software.
   3. Get rid of dead stock.
5. CONFECTIONERY. Bad decline here – below average for the store.  Something is wrong.
   1. When was the last time you refreshed your confectionery offer?  The data suggests it is either tired or being poorly managed.
   2. Make sure that these products are easily seen, well merchandised and under shopper noses.
   3. Look at your category breakdown. Get chocolates, gum, mints and cough lollies right. Look within these categories what products work the best.  Maybe focus on them.
6. GIFTS. Great result.  Good year on year growth.
   1. Your sales of Russell Collection products show what you can sell. I’d focus more on this.
   2. Get products out of MISC. and into more meaningful categories so you can more easily understand what is working and what is not.
   3. I get the feeling you could expand your gift range.
7. MAGAZINES. Good result, within industry average.
   1. Special interest magazines account for 11.79% of your sales.  This is excellent.  These customers are sticky.  Keep at your special interest range.
   2. Have you done a relay in the last two years. If not, get it done. Create a fresh magazine department.
   3. Co-locate to promote ranges shoppers forget about. The categories which respond well to this are: crosswords, food, crafts (quilting, crochet) and hobby / sports like fishing depending on the area.
   4. Always have a magazine offer at the counter – but uncluttered.
   5. Always have a magazine promotion facing the front of the shop to attract customers.
8. LOTTO. Good growth.
   1. What are you doing to leverage lotto sales for other sales?
   2. Do you offer an up-sell to Lotto customers?
   3. Do you reward lottery customers in any way?
   4. Are you promoting any other products at the lottery counter?
9. STATIONERY. Bad result. Sales declining too much.
   1. What is it with all the categories. Way too many.  No more than 20 otherwise you can;t manage.
   2. Ink is your stand our stationery category but it is declining for you. This needs regular external price-focused promotion.
   3. You have a great range of stationery by the looks of it.  Use the ranked sales report to see what you have not sold in the last six months. his could help you cull to something more financially rewarding.
   4. What’s your margin position? If people think you are expensive, are you – maybe you could charge more.
   5. be very careful of some of the old school products which people are purchasing less of. remember, you really need to turn each item five to seven times a year to justify time, space and stock investment.
10. GENERAL.
    1. Do you know your top ten selling products?  If not, find out – use the 10 x 10 report.
    2. Make sure that you are promoting other items with your top sellers.
    3. With newspapers: Better Homes and Gardens for the weekend, AWW for the week it comes out, other titles which you know will sell but which shoppers will not look for – put these next to newspapers.
    4. What’s your counter look like?  Go around to the customer side and try hard to look at it as they look at it. How many messages are there? Do you have any old product there? De-clutter.
    5. Do you have products left over from seasons? If so, why haven’t you quit them?  Okay if they fit in with a regular department maybe. But if, for example, you still have easter specific product in the shop get rid of it.
    6. Consider asking your staff what they would change if they owned the business. Listen to them, consider what they have to say.
    7. No change in a newsagency is permanent, especially in this time of considerable disruption.

What I look for is small steps in traffic, basket size and margin.  These three combined create a health business.

I appreciate the opportunity to look at your data.  I hope this helps.  I’d be happy to discuss any of this with you.

While I see newsagents facing challenges ahead I do think that these present us with opportunities.  It is up to each of us to chase these … aggressively. I really do believe that we make our own success.