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.