I was talking with a magazine publisher recently about early returns and they shared this story.
1,000 copies of a mid-tier magazine were returned by newsagents the day they arrived in-store. Most were returned by newsagents who would usually sell out or at least come very close to selling out. In almost every case the newsagents left themselves with less stock than their most recent average sales.
On seeing the 1,000 early returns, the publisher decided to reallocate the stock to supermarkets. 800 copies of the 1,000 copies sold.
The newsagents who early returned their stock helped 800 shoppers buy the title in supermarkets. This could have these shoppers looking for the title in that channel in the future. The newsagent action also encouraged the publisher to pay more attention to supermarkets.
There are consequences for early returns beyond getting your magazine bill down, consequences for all of the channel.
I don’t want newsagents to lose magazine sales we should not lose. Our future depends on the extraordinary traffic magazines generate for us. We need to ‘protect’ this traffic by not losing a single certain magazine sale.
what magazine is it i would like to know if i am one of these that early returned .I don’t think they would have comne from north qld becasue most of us up here top all of our magazines ..
Scanned based sales would fix all this up ,but then we would have hardly anything to chat about on here 🙂
Shaun, most returns were of stock that would have sold based on recent sales data in these stores. This is not a SBR issue, not for this title.
mark name the mag, i would like to see the amount that was allocated versus what the most recent sales average was. Lets stop tinkering around the edges here, was this magazine oversupplied?, if so then the publisher should wear part of the blame for allowing that oversupply to happen. I do not over early return, but can understand how the supply system can result in some agents venting their frustration in this way.
i am sick of being lumped in with poorly managed newsagencies by the publishers, while they sit back and say as individuals they do not abuse the system (or allow it to be abused) If the publishers are going to hold up individual newsagencies as an example of how the industry as a whole behaves, then quite righty we can view the entire publishing channel by the actions of a few that allow the continual abuse of the newsagency channel by the distributors.
If they want the early return problem stopped, they have the power to do it, but maybe not the heart and balls.
Im starting to get cranky with this whole sorry saga.
Rick, I can’t. The title was not oversupplied. This publisher has a track record for tightly managed supply as they rely more on retail sales than advertising.
I agree with you about being sick of being lumped with others.
The core message here is that many newsagents returned to a level leaving considerably less stock on the shelves from day 1 than their average sales for recent issues. This has definitely led to a sales reduction for them.
This publisher is not saying this is how the channel behaves. They are saying – look at what these newsagents did and how we reacted. The publisher has not altered supply for other newsagents, only those who did early return the day the title came out.
There is a simple process to follow for early returning, a process than is right for newsagents and does hold publishers and distributors to account.
Mark, you can’t tell us which magazine but would you tell us was it a quarterley, bi-annual or annual, and how many newsagents did this?
I have never done this, but I know of newsagents that received for example 100 AWW at the end of the month, early returned 60 then ordered extras the next week so the stock is paid for in the month it is sold. Risky strategy because the stock may not be available but it does happen.
Surely this must be a minority of agents and how long does the mag go on sale for? Is it a weekly, a monthly or one of the others? I have only a limited amount of space. If it hasn’t sold in a month it probably won’t sell. More importantly I don’t have space to keep it longer and so must be moved on. When was it delivered beginning or end of month because sometimes people use our cash for their cashflo?
Good selling bimonthly. But the title does not matter. Early in the month.
For this 1,000 copies, the newsagents involved left themselves with considerably less stock than they would usually sell.
The early returns were done the day the title came out as I noted.
Who the hell has time to early return early in the month ?
Would love to know who the publisher is as until then I’ll take it with a grain of salt as while I believe what you’re saying was presented to you Mark I would be selective of which publisher I would trust I think.
BTW, how much specific information are they sharing with you ? Surely this is mostly confidential and shouldn’t be shared with potential competitors? Without knowing the reasoning behind the newsagencies involved returning their stock we’re only getting a part of the story. It seems silly if the’re throwing away money but have they replaced the magazine space with something more profitable that offsets the magazine sales loss ?
I early returned some crossword titles today I simply have no more room for any new titles ,they might have sold but who knows . Even though I have early returned them the supplier will not get them back for at least a month and then I would say they would sit at followmont for a few weeks then they go to GG and then get maybe audited ,my point is how on earth would a publisher get access to 1000 Magazines from all over Australia to redistribute in time to still have a valid on sale ,it is almost unbelievable that it could happen
I suggest that the publisher should be doing his own homework and understanding his own demographic by
working with the distributor.
To say that newsagents are responsible for the undersell is to just state the obvious without having the shared data that should exist between publisher and distributor via exchangeit.
Newsagents are constantly trying to keep cashflow positive and the stock I received this morning was horrendous. The early
returns system which is one of the best
things about Retailer (Tower system’s program) is the best discovery I have ever
made (thanks to Tim at Tower). I hadn’t
been using this facility but it is fantastic and is allowing me to only early return those mags with a 60% or more returns
ratio over the past 6 issues.
I, like other agents, am sick of getting lumped in with some agents who don’t do
the right thing but the publishers need to ensure that their product is “targeted” to
the right demographic.
This is the No 1 priority for them and they have NEVER done that.
Newsagents, hold up your heads and don’t
be cowed down by these overgeneralized statements from one publisher.
June, the publisher did their work and the allocations were best practice. No over supply at all – as I wrote in the post.
Why is it that newsagents take the default position that a newsagent could not be at fault here?
Supermarkets taking on a bimonthly mag at short notice?
No over supply at all ?
Enough newsagents both early returning and getting the full mag returns back to the distributor in time for them to be redistributed to these supermarkets?
Sorry my bulls**t detectors twitching.
Mark i dosn’t sound true i would question how they managed to get the returns in time to resell
And this is what we do we find all sorts of reasons to question something because we don;t want it to be true.
Give me credit people.
Stock I early return this week will be in the warehouse and available for reallocation next week.
Supermarkets will take stock of any title they have space allocated for.
I find it funny that people want to rush to the defence of fellow Newsagents when it looks pretty clear cut they are making bad business decisions that at the end of the day hurt not only there bottom line but all of us as an industry.
Having said that I see CEO’s of major companies cost them millions on a bad call.
We will never be as One while every little king on there hill can make there own call.
What we need is a system in place that if (who ever) said you will take 100 gift tags and that is everyone then you take them but that boat I feel sailed long ago. Without us all be as One Newsagents will never make in roads into anything.
Been in newsagentS for 40 years and it is all ways our fault ,time they did something about over supply .G G today and wed well over the top ,is it as agents go down are the just pushing more on to others
xwords every where killing the the ones that we do sell Stop one and they send others B S
So Jim what are you going to do about it? Do you have data that would stand up in court? If so, do something. Complain in writing with your data to the ACCC. Look at your state government jurisdiction as I am sure you have an avenue there – if you have the data.
Mark have you done this in the past ? if so what was the outcome ?
I have used the small business commissioner and VCAT in the past for supplier issues with a good outcome. However, I can’t go into details because of what you sign when you go into these things. I’d happily help anyone with the process.
fair enough.
Shaun it can be done. Indeed, I outlined the details of the process and the data needed to a joint meeting of all the associations in a meeting on magazines a year ago.
This title is not mine. I see early returns from newsagents that would usually sell out of my titles. I and a small publisher and cannot afford to send too much stock. So yeah I have newsagents, probably 150 per issue, sending magazines back on the first day of issue.
A thank you from Frankie magazine, great to get positive some feed back!
Huh jenny?
Mark, Have forwarded the email from GG to you (don’t know how to load onto blog)
Ah, I thought the comment related to this thread. Yes, the award for them is excellent kudos. I am planning on posting about this next week.
No it doesn’t but with all the negative comments about publishers, distributors & newsagents it was nice to see a thankyou to the newsagency channel for our enthusiasm and dedication.
With two BI Monthly Locals (to same region) I carry sales can be 150 plus each or 20 plus of each. It all depends on the stories and their relevance to local consumption. On of the best they did was of the Local Ballet School. Even my Milkman brought 5. What I am saying is at times there can be compelling reasons for early returning on examination of the contents. However, I do give these the 2 magazines far greater latitude that I would do for most Monthlies.
A case in point for early returning might be QLD Wedding and Bride. I recieved 24 copies on 29/8/12 and have sold 9. Yesterday i received 10 more. This Magazine is also on the extra large side so it demands more space…..but how much more should i be expected to give it? I dont see any other option but to send the 10 (at least) back and being full copy costs me in frieght to do so.
ME too allan, my shelf doesn’t fit
Publisher The trouble is the account ,if i get stopped we do not get the main sellers there lies the trouble in keeping your account to a size that you can pay ,fix this and we are almost home maybe weekly accounts for your weeklies and 60 days for the rest, there need to seperated Early returns ,if we are not shaw we check g g sale figues on line + what we sold last time that is your system does not tell you ,the bottom line all comes back to the account
Al, contact the publisher direct. I suspect they are on a split delivery plan.
Thanks Mark, I suspect you are probably right but with such a bulky Mag i would have thought SBR would have been a better option.
I can’t understand newsagents early returning happy to lose sales. I check every early return to make sure I don’t do this.
Is this not what the system is designed to do???
Certain agents, obviously quite a few judging by the number returned, felt they could not sell the quantity allocated to them. The stock was returned and re-distributed to outlets that could.
We do not know the title of the magazine, all we do know is that A LOT of newsagents returned stock judging by the number being reallocated. So we do not know the reasons behind those agents early returning that stock.
Perhaps it was a seasonal time, and display space was limited. Perhaps the publisher pissed some newsagents off by advertising the magazine on Cudo at 50% off?? Who knows?
Whilst I am dissapointed the sales moved from the Newsagency Channel to the supermarket channel, on this occassion it appears the system has worked.
On the flip side of the coin, my store is surrounded by Woolworths, Big W and Coles. I regularly sell out of NW, Famous, Grazia, Take 5 and Better Homes and Gardens. It is impossible to get extra stock, particularly with Network Services inaccurate Sales Based Replenishment Basis.
Yet Woolworths, Coles and Big W have a stack of stock which I cannot get.
I do not here suppliers whinging about that, or doing anything to prevent this from happening.
Amanda we also know that supply was tight – i.e. barely above net sales. We know that the newsagents involved left less stock on the shelves than they had recently sold of this title. I’d note that no one asked me to write this post nor did they suggest it. I wrote the post because if this behaviour continues, the newsagency channel will suffer and I do not want to see that.
On your sell outs, have you approached ACP direct. if so, email me and I will escalate it for you.
After many, many months of oversupply, my AWW supply has now been adjusted to a sensible level and SBR is working a treat!! We have sold more than expected in the first week and a half since the new issue came out and we are about to receive our second SBR top up!! Perfect!!
If only all magazine supply worked that way!
i sold out of BHG very early, unable to get more??? system sucks sometimes
Rick, call the publisher, sometimes they can get you stock.
Bruce, we were short delivered AWW this month and were told no replacement stock was available. Go Figure.
Rick, the word back tonight from Pacific Magazines is that all floor stock for this issue is exhausted. Sorry.
name the mag so we can all decide what is right and wrong for our shop not a publisher or anybody for that matter its our shops its our calls
P, The name of the magazine is not the issue here. This post is about behaviour that will lead to reduced magazine sales for newsagents. Yes, it’s the call of every newsagent doing early returns. The problem is that poor decisions by some newsagents will hurt other newsagents.
poor decisions will hurt all newsagents and not knowing which titles this happens to will hurt all newsagents- you know,they know only the newsagent doesn’t some will keep making the same mistakes A much better idea is not to keep this information to yourselves working together to fix this wrong is the right thing to do
Mark not sure if this has been asked before but was it on a split delivery ?this can confuse sometimes , you arrive mags and you already have them on the shelf and without thinking you get the sh*ts with it and send them back
No Shaun. Nothing unusual about this delivery. Very solid history of sales.
we can all guess as to this or that but the truth is there are people who know this information.It shouldn’t be privileged, once we all know we can make our own informed decisions
P, nothing changes the facts: supply was tight – i.e. not oversupply, newsagents early returned the day it came out and left themselves with considerably less sock that they had recently been selling of the title. This equals lost sales. The publisher placed the returned stock in supermarkets.
Instead of discussing early return behaviour we have spent more time bemoaning aspects of the magazine distribution system not in play in this instance.
I worry at the message some are sending publishers.
I dont worry about any message to suppliers.(for the record we dont early return anything)the discussion about mag distribution is mostly about which title(which is a fair call) to this point only you on this blog knows.saves a lot of moaning if we all knew
P, I was given the information confidentially and have been asked to respect that. Knowing the title will not alter the facts.
I enjoy reading this blog and greatly appreciate that Mark devotes so much of his valuable time to make it available, however many times it only takes one person who does not carefully read Mark’s words before hitting the keyboard and boom! The topic no longer bears any relevance to Mark’s original post. This topic is a prime example.
Mark stated 1,000 copies of a mid-tier magazine were returned by newsagents the day they arrived in-store. Key words THE DAY THEY ARRIVED IN-STORE.
Further key words MOST WERE RETURNED BY NEWSAGENTS WHO WOULD USUALLY SELL OUT OR AT LEAST COME VERY CLOSE TO SELLING OUT.
Mark later stated it was a BI-MONTHLY title.
Mark’s SOLE concern was for those newsagents who SUPER EARLY returned 1,000 copies of a title they probably would have sold, if they had NOT returned them THE DAY THEY ARRIVED IN STORE. He wrote I don’t want newsagents to lose magazine sales we should not lose.
Is it too late to hope for just as vigorous a discussion about the pitfalls of early returning – with comments from newsagents who actually DO early return?
and? where are your comments ? please feel free to share ideas
We early return. We’d like to think that we do so with some thought. We look at the sales history and hold the average plus one. We always give new titles at least one go. Each early return is ideally a consequence of a considered decision.
Thats what we’d like to think any way. But let me tell you what goes wrong. The EDIs from the distributors aren’t usually fully available until after 3.30 pm, and often later. The arrival process in Tower is time intensive and takes at least 45-60 minutes to run through – longer if you have a lot of low volume magazine titles to process. The busy time in our shop for a number of other tasks is also between 3.30-5.30. There are a lot of distractions. So occasionally we rush the job or delegate it to a staff member. I am sure that across this scenario we occasionally make errors and unwittingly contribute to the unnecessary early returns that are the source of such anxiety and stress at publisher level.
Our suggestion would be that the process could be more automated. Is it possible to write a programme that automatically early returns quantities that are a % factor greater than the sales history. This would then protect our working capital while removing the responsibility for the decision from the emotional whimsicality of the human hand.
We never early return the day a title goes on-sale. Not even using presets in the software (see below). I prefer to do this myself, usually in week three of the month and taking into account space requirements, sales and other business factors.
Azeem, the software program you want already exists in your software and has done for years. You can set appropriate parameters for your business. It’s covered in the regular free training offered by Tower.
Thanks for that Mark. We will chase it up.
I try and leave it untill the last week of the month , but a lot of the times this is not possible .The landlord has said i cannot push through the wall into next doors building just to accomodate crossword tittles . Lovatts tittles get right of way when it comes to these tittles . then the thats life take5 new idea etc puzzles and last of all the oversaes tittles do not reallt get a chance unless there is space . If i get a $30 magazine on log cabins in alaska this to would be early returned the as soon as it comes in .
The problem with not early returning immediately is that a. it encourages the publisher to send more titles of the same category, and b. you have to put them out and then take them off.
Im convinced that magazines conform to the 60/40 rule and what everyone is talking about is incremental sales in a (perhaps) 25%gp product line with a high holding and management cost.
Outside the top 40% of titles, I say return early and return hard.
Mark, I don’t normally early return if I can avoid it, but advise me on this example. Today we received a further allocation (20) of a specialist cookbook. We still have 13 in stock, which the supplier of course knows. It was a successful book, but even with Christmas coming up, I doubt we will sell even our current 13, let alone another 20. What should I do, grin and bare it, or early return!
Bruce in this situation I would check total sales of the previous issue to be sure and then most probably early return and I would let the publisher know as something appears to have gone wrong with their processes.
Thanks, Mark. We have sold more than 50 of this book, but over a long period. Our current stock level is more than adequate, so early return is the right choice. This is in my opinion a good example of where the distributor should be using their sales based replenishment tools.
Bruce it depends on the publisher / distributor contract. The distributor may have no choice but to scale out the stock delivered to them. I agree with your assessment on early returning.
if all facts are as stated, then not much point discussing it on here as im sure those newsagents that have early returned this title that would havbe sold in their store, are probably not smart enough to be on a computer anyway.
i early return, sometimes on the day it arrives, BUT it is always a considered decision, am very confident it has not cost me any sales
Same here Bruce but I returned the old stock and kept the new stock