Outside and inside the massive Times Square shopping mall in Hong Kong is larger-than-life displays of Lego for Christmas and celebrating the anniversary of the company. This brand is massive the world over. I know of newsagents who do excellent business with Lego products. The displays I have just seen make me think it’s time to include the range in at least some of my stores. It certainly fits with the collectible focus we have.
Check out home one card and gift shop in Hong Kong is displaying their boxed Christmas cards. They even have them on the floor! I was shocked at first but then I watched shoppers. They reached down and selected boxes from the floor as much as from the table – defying what we have been taught over the years. And it’s not an Asian culture thing as this shop was being shopped by plenty of expats.
We have offered Christmas toilet paper in a past and it’s always sold out. We usually brought in 24 or so rolls, a couple of designs. When I saw this display a couple of days ago in Hong Kong I realised that our range was nothing, we were half-hearted. This display is so good that you almost feel compelled to purchase. It grabs your attention and wonder gee if they have this much plenty must be buying it. Someone once told me that smart retailers leverage psychology to drive shopper activity. I suspect that’s in play with this large display of Christmas-themed toilet paper.
Check out how one supermarket in Hong Kong is using cane baskets to make their impulse purchase pitch to shoppers lining up to pay. I like the passive nature of the baskets – they are more subtle than the traditional retail fixturing one sees next to the checkout line. In this supermarket they used the baskets to offer an unusual mix of items. I saw several shoppers purchase from them.
I was in a supermarket in Hong Kong recently and saw this display of Advent Calendars next to the line leading to the checkout and it struck me that this is a space newsagents should own channel-wide. We are excellent habit-based businesses – people visit for lottery tickets, newspapers, magazines, cards (more than any other retail channel). We should nail habit and key seasonal opportunities like Advent calendars. I know some newsagents do … our whole channel should.
Further to my post last week about the magazine wall at the rear of my new newsagency, this photo shows another magazine fixture we have in front of the magazine wall in this new store.
While the photo was taken when we had only just opened and therefore had nowhere near the full magazine range, you can see that we have five pockets per column and three of those show the full cover.
I urge any newsagent getting new magazine fixtures to NOT get their shopfitter to build magazine units. It would be wasted money. Shopfitters should not have to construct any magazine fixtures for todays needs or the Newsagency of the Future.
Overall, the business can handle 700 facings. I think this is enough to satisfy consumer interest and to position us as a newsagency in the mind of our shoppers.
This is the newspaper display unit we decided on for the new newsagency just opened. The only title not fitting in the unit is the Herald Sun and the Saturday editions of the Herald Sun and The Age – because of volume. Being free-standing, we can place the unit where it best suits us. The unit makes finding your desired title easy.
Footnote: the distribution agent supplying this new location is allowing us a broader range of newspaper titles than the distribution agent in one of my other stores.
I noticed this hang-sell display of Christmas decorations yesterday. It’s a volume, mass merchant, approach. I was drawn to the display from 30 or so metres away because it looked like there was a big range on offer. It looked more bold than the photo suggests.
This is the approach I am thinking about for next year. Going out early and taking more of a mass approach than the boutique approach taken this year with Christmas decorations.
Any newsagent is welcome to participate in a free online workshop – Best practice magazine management – being hosted by my newsagency software company this Thursday @ 11am. The session will also cover how to early return without hurting your sales.
Every shopper leaving your newsagency should be given a DL size flyer with gift suggestions. Change it each week. This week, start with Kris Kringle gifts (for office parties and community group Christmas events). Next week focus on, maybe, gifts under $20. … and so on.
Creating the flyers will take a couple of minutes. They don’t have to be fancy. Slip them in newspapers and magazines at the counter during the sale as a bookmark. Put them in your bags too.
For a tiny investment you could drive some additional Christmas purchases.
In one of my newsagencies, we have already experienced Christmas sales this year as we did last year more than two weeks from now. It feels as if Christmas is early and bigger than ever.
I was talking with a newsagent yesterday who expressed concern that for their business Christmas 2012 may be worse that Christmas 2011. On current numbers, they are down 11%
While I am sure the difference between both businesses is, in part, a factor of socio economic circumstance for the demographics our respective businesses serve, it reinforces the need for us to manage and market our businesses for broad appeal. We can’t rely for next year on this year’s shopper mix.
There used to be a time when opening the door of a reasonably stocked traditional newsagency was all that was needed for business success. That is not the case today. The only things exclusive to any newsagency today are management skill and customer service. We have to leverage these.
To broaden the appeal of your newsagency think about your regulars and then think about what you need to change about your business and how you would market your business to appeal to shoppers who are not your regulars. It’s hard work, sure, but it is necessary in retail today.
Opening the door is not marketing or management activity. In today’s retail market we have to chase new customers, offer new products and deliver a service experience that is better than expected. If we do this we will broaden our appeal and that is one factor in Christmas success.
In my newsagency enjoying early christmas sales growth, a key difference is the pitch of the business out into the mall. The products on offer this year are less traditional for a newsagency. This is helping attract shoppers from the mall who are not regulars.
The release of the report of the Leveson Inquiry has UK newspapers saying they don’t need the control measures outlined in the report. A tragedy has been uncovered brought about by systematic and systemic crime and corruption and the plan for stopping this happening again is being rejected because businesses think they can control themselves. Self regulation failed the UK.
We have seen similar complaints in Australia following the Finklestein report into media regulation. News outlets don’t want regulation, they say it’s censorship. We have censorship in Australia today in some media outlets and bias on show in their pages. Look at global warming – many media outlets do not report the facts. Just this week with the AWU scandal we have seen media outlets take down spin in the face of evidence that their ‘news’ was wrong.
You sell more copies and attract more eyeballs with fear and spin than facts.
For a feeling of how newspaper publishers have approached Leveson, read Roy Greenslade’s column in The Guardian.
I am for any measure that dilutes the control of of mass media into few hands and I am for any measure that holds media proprietors personally responsible for false and misleading reporting and criminal activity by any who work for them in pursuing story material.
One of my older newsagencies did not get newspapers today until 9:30am. Our distribution newsagent operates a retail newsagency in the centre. Their excuse was that they short supplied … not so short that every other retailer including themselves didn’t have plenty of stock. This is the same distribution newsagent who has blocked access to a raft of titles and about whom we have had to complain to publishers regularly with only mediocre success.
No wonder the newspaper publishers want to change the distribution model.
This photo of my newest newsagency shows the view across the shop to the counter and the rear wall. It shows part of our gift range. This is situated between our card department and the counter. We have gone with smaller display units to enable us to create clusters of displays targeting specific interests.
The floorspace allocation for this new newsagency has been done taking on board much of what I discuss in my Newsagency of the Future workshop. While we remain supportive of traditional newsagency categories – magazines and newspapers – we are using cards, gifts and plush to pull in traffic from the mall and to help us get to an above average (for a newsagency) overall GP.
The shop itself is 150 sq m. This is at the upper end of what I’d go for in a shopping mall.
This photo shows how we are displaying magazines on the rear wall of the new newsagency I am a partner in and about which I blogged yesterday. This wall of magazines nis one of three display locations for magazines, offering around 700 facings.
You can see in the photo that the pockets are deep and the full cover of each magazine is on show. The fixtures are clip-in clip-out, this facilitates easy reconfiguration.
Shoppers entering the business see this wall. It has been lit to draw attention to it from the front of the shop.
This photo is important as it shows we remain committed to magazines even though we are playing with the rest of the model.
I have newsagencies in two Westfield centres and am looking forward to the results of today, Super Saturday. there can been considerable marketing activity inside and outside Westfield centres promoting this.
Westfield has also produced collateral for us with details of our particular promotion – enabling us, and other retailers, to have displays connecting with the collateral of the campaign.
I like that we are part of something bigger and can benefit from extra traffic drawn in by this campaign.
Having considered how other retailers are approaching this one-day event, we have decided to focus on one category and go hard in terms of our offer. We have sourced product specifically to enable us to make a pitch that works for us and for shoppers.
The latest issue of famous magazine includes a pointer to newsagents as a retailer from which The Submissive can be purchased. Every promotional pointer like this helps position our channel. They also give us a reason to promote the products promoted in magazines in this way.
I notice that Big W has the title at half price. This is nuts but typical Big W and out of the control of Pacific Magazines.
