50.8% of those responding to the Back to School engagement survey over the last three days indicated that Back to School is not an important season in their newsagency.
24% of respondents said that their Back to School commitment is increasing for 2013, 33.1% say there will be less commitment and 43.0% say their commitment will remain unchanged.
While the 122 survey responses represent a small sample size, I think the results do represent the sentiment of the channel more broadly. I say this based on discussion of this topic with many newsagents right around the country.
While Back to School is an important season, more newsagents are opting out having, I think, become disillusioned with the season.
With more schools and school groups chasing price deals and margins shrinking to unsustainable levels, newsagents are left to take on the season in the hope of attracting shoppers who may stick around through the year.
Competing with Big W, Officeworks and school booklist specialists is purely a margin game. Customer service is rarely considered. Supporting local jobs is also rarely considered. How slim are we prepared to go to win a Back to School customer? For the average newsagency business this is a significant challenge.
I pulled out of Back to School in one of my newsagencies a few years ago when a financial review showed I’d need 300% increase in sales just to break even in the face of high shopping centre costs.
I know of some newsagents who are tremendously successful with Back to School. The most successful tend to fall into two camps – managing school contracts in a warehouse operation run outside the newsagency and a long-term and well-known shopping centre based outpost.
I decided to run the survey to provide newsagents with an opportunity to register their view. I also wanted to give suppliers an opportunity to hear what the channel thinks.
Mark,
We will not be doing back to school to the same level as previous years and it is not because of other suppliers but the local school itself. After asking us for years to supply gift certificates for their awards night, i was gobsmacked when a parent supplied me with a list of books etc for the 2012 year, more than 50% of the items on the list the school where selling themselves to raise money for the P&C. When i asked about this and who is the supplier and could i possably supply some items i was told they have a very good deal and where not interested. So much for supporting for the local school. last week i recieved a letter to once again supply gift certificates for their awards night i have yet to make a discission on this.
I don’t know how many other agents have come accross this.
BTS for us is increasing, but we have a shopping centre outpost for the 2 weeks before school goes back in the main mall every year for the last 8 years.
We do not chase schools for their booklist business for the reasons mentioned above. We get the parents who do not hand in their forms for whatever reason and try to fill the lists themselves.
We have a Big W located outside our store, and our outpost is 60 metres from Big W. Long ago we gave up trying to compete on price – and it was the best decision we made. We win on service and quality proiducts at a fair price. 90% of what we sell at the outpost stays at our regular retail price – no discounting and have not done so for 6 years.
Over the last 3 years we have varied between 5,500 and 6,500 customers at the mall outpost over 2 weeks, ranging from single items to full booklists. For us it is a great season – even with Big W and K-Mart in the centre, and Officeworks and the old Wooldridges (RIP) less than 2kms from our centre.
The key for us has been great service and quality products.
Glenn, I’ve never considered outposting back to school but it sounds interesting. How many shops are in your center as I imagine it would take good door counts to make it work. I would love to hear what type of product you display for BTS.
Brendan, we have 124 specialty stores and 4 majors. At BTS we put out 16 trestle tables and 4 tills in the mall – I have a data cable running back to the shop thru the centre roof so i can run our POS system out there. We have everything except text books, plus fashionable type stationery that we get extra margins on – eg fancy display books that may appeal to teenagers etc.
It has taken a few years to build it to the level it is at, but it is worth it.
slightly off topic, and apologies for digging up an old thread, buuuuuuut:
Has anyone been approached by a company called booklist.com.au ?
It seems pretty expensive to setup, but we are wondering if anyone has had any success with it?
booklists.com.au or booklist.com.au?
Yes I have looked at it, but for me I cannot justify the asking price, tho it does look good, just too expensive.
Now on our 26 th year still going strong ,last year really good 40 % up