Over the years I have heard and seen some horror newsagency business acquisitions unfold: owners leaving immediately after settlement and not training the purchaser, the deletion of sales data leaving the new owner with nothing to guide business decisions, the cancelling of seasonal orders leaving the business without stock. The most recent story is more brutal.
The party purchasing the newsagency took reasonable steps to protect the business data following settlement. Someone, allegedly the former owner of the business entered the business and physically attacked the main computer in the business – cutting cables and damaging the hard drive. All very nasty for the new newsagents.
When we sell our newsagency businesses we have an obligation to sell based in accurate business data, to leave key business data in tact as it’s an asset of the business and to leave the running of the business to the new owners following settlement.
The business affected is moving on – but probably with a wariness thanks to this experience.
With no mention of theft, this certainly sound personel and not just a random break in. The allegations sound well foubded and are disappointing to hear.
In these circumstances the brokers have a lot to answer for and leave a lot to be desired.
In our case once the broker got the HoA and deposit he literally disappearred. We haven’t seen or heard of him since.
It would’ve helped also if VANA or ANF had some kind of programme to assist new owners but I have never met one of their staff who knows anything at all about day to day running of a newsagency.
Our biggest problem when we took over was getting the staff to do things our way instead of the old owners tired old way. For example we would do magazine relays early in the morning and come in later in the day to find all the magazines put back into their old pockets. We also had lots of problems with suppliers. We couldn’t get them to talk to us. They just wanted to call in and pick up orders from whichever staff member they had developed a cosy relationship with.
So, sadly, in the end we had to exit staff and change suppliers for a lot of our lines.
VANNA DOES HAVE HELP FOR NEWSAGENTS
We were lucky when we purchased our Newsagency. We both did the week long ANF Training program before we took over and learnt a lot from it. We were also very lucky in that the previous owners spent a lot of time with us explaining how to do things. Their reasoning behind spending so much time with us was they it would reflect on them if we floundered.
Azeem , i thought it was a must have to get yoy lotto that you do the anf course ? Been awhile since we did it but i thought it was something that was ment to happen
the ANF/VANA course is compulsory even without lotto. I had to do the course after the purchase of our 2nd newsagency even with 5 years experience as an existing operator!
The facts that we dealt with at the time were:
Tattersalls expect you to do their course, 1 week theory plus 1 week in an approved outlet. Australia Post offers and requires the same. These are excellent practical courses run by people who are genuinely helpful. There is also the possibility of follow up mentoring, plus the benefits of shared experiences with other course members. We still (2 years later) regularly exchange ideas and tips with people we met on these courses.
ACP/Network expect you to do an ANF sponsored course which is based on modules of a TAFE retail management certificate. This can be completed online from home within a day and an evening. It is a money making, box ticking exercise. It is just one of the many steps that had to be completed in order to meet our settlement deadlines.
None of the other suppliers (including seriously major publishers) required anything. In fact they didn’t even bother to call in to explain their policies and procedures, or expectations.
I have never heard about ANF / VANA courses or services to support ongoing learning. Actually a mentoring prgramme that kicked in a month or so after the rush of takeover and settlement would be really useful.