Magazine distributor Network Services has announced today it is moving to a Monday / Thursday magazine delivery roster.
This not unexpected move will alter workflow and shopper traffic in newsagencies. I can think of plenty of Take 5 shoppers who will be disappointed. You only need to look at the seven day sales decay curve to see the impact.
I do wonder if this is part of a broader move around other changes – time will tell.
Newsagents have been notified that Woman’s Day is coming our this Friday, three days early. There has been no announcement from Bauer or network services. Newsagents found out because they have received the electronic invoice already.
I could be wrong but I doubt the interest in Jennifer Hawkins’ wedding justifying the effort and challenges of going on sale three days early.
Newsagents are the flavour of the month with digital ad companies. I’ve been approached by four digital ad companies wanting to put screens over the last two weeks. I’ve said no to each.
I see these digital ad platforms as not offering fair compensation to access out traffic. Further, I don’t see them bringing in new traffic.
Our focus today needs to be on generating new traffic. The last thing we need is another leech product or service.
Checkout the lotto fitout in a Whitcoulls store in downtown Auckland I was in on Monday.
With fitout costs being top of mind for newsagents in Australia I figured seeing what’s required in NZ could interest some.
The space requirement is smaller and the shop fit requirements simpler than what we see in Australia. However, for the fifteen minutes I was there the lotto counter was not buys so it could be that this was the wrong store to compare.
What you can see in the photo was the only corporate branding for lotto in this store.
In New Zealand on Monday I saw this unit in-stor for Croxley Prepaid, a different approach to outbound parcels. Shoppers buy a box or envelope, fill it with what they are sending and it’s then delivered through the DX network. Kind of an interesting model.
Click on the link for more details.
Given the placement in-store and the state of the display, I got the feeling it’s not a highly sought after service.
Yesterday’s decision to increase the minimum wage should act as encouragement to newsagents to drive their gross profit. I have italicised should since I am not sure this will be the case.
The traditional response by small business owners is to complain about rising wages. While I understand that, it is also reasonable to ask what is being done in the business to improve its situation for handling rising wages.
What have we done to grow gross profit? What have we done to attract more shoppers? What have we done to get existing shoppers spending more?
Retailers understand the importance of doing these things, they understand taking responsibility for business performance. Shopkeepers, on the other hand, will complain about rising costs and, usually, expect others to drive traffic, GP and shopper efficiency.
Was the increase in minimum wage justified? Yes, in my view, something we can work with … if we’re retailers.
Newsagents currently have three magazines on our shelves with sachets of Uncle Tobys oats stuck inside. The free pack of oats makes each magazine fatter than usual, requiring more shelf and or storage space and taking up more time to manage.
This is why newsagents should be paid extra – to cover the extra space and time involved.
Just as General Mills will be paying the publisher of each magazine – including Bauer for Australian Women’s Weekly – a premium for the thick ‘ad’, newsagents should be paid a premium. It’s only fair.
The challenge is we don’t have a relationship with General Mills. We rely on publishers and distributors. However, when it comes to thicker than usual magazines I’m not aware of them thinking about us and the extra services they expect us to provide.
This issue is something newsagent associations could usefully spend time on, negotiating fees for extra services such as thick magazines, heavy magazines and magazines that do not meet minimum performance criteria such as a 50% sell through.
The current approach of taking extra space and time from us without compensation is unfair. It disadvantages us over most of our competitors on the magazine retail space.
While I’ve left the oats sachets in the magazines in my newsagencies I know of some others who have removed them. I can understand that, especially for titles they would usually try and flat stack. You can’t do that with the current issue of AWW.
The Guardian opened a coffee shop in London last week. Apparently, there is not a print newspaper in sight in this newspaper publisher owned business – iPads are built in.
I’ve supported the launch of Australian mag renegade Collective in my newsagency as shown here, here and most recently here and so I was disappointed to see subscriptions being promoted at 45% off on the ad screens in the public areas in my shopping mall.
There was no call to action to get the title at retail, no mention of my newsagency in this centre where the advertising was running.
I get that the ads are part of a national campaign to run, probably, in multiple locations on the digital ad network. I also get that subscriptions are part of any magazine supply mix. But don’t use traffic generated in part by the many thousands of dollars I pay centre management to bring traffic to my centre to sell products I sell direct to my customers.
I and many newsagents are helping launch this title with display space without cost. Some shoppers could recognise the title in these digital ads because of the free help we have provided.
Yeah, I’m not happy about this campaign.
I groaned when I noticed the UK edition of Grazia on our shelves. The Australian edition had not performed well for us – and others based on its closure. We’re onto our third issue of the UK edition and, surprise surprise, it’s going okay.
I was all set to early return the copy I found on the shelf and contact Gotch to cancel supply. However, selling two copies of the three we have been sent for the first two issues caused me to not be hasty in cancelling this title. Acting without checking would have been wrong. I could have ended up losing sales of two, maybe more, copies a week for a year.
At two copies a week its paying its way for us.
I think part of the success is due to clever placement by one of our team members with UK titles. It makes sense when you think about it.
I was talking with a relatively new newsagent this past week, someone who had owned their business for a year. They commented that they were starting to get the hang of things and realised that a couple of the people they relied on, with years of newsagency experience, had been giving them poor advice.
When they purchased the business they kept on all the staff and fell into the routine of being told what to do by some of the staff. This challenged their confidence and, in hindsight, made them prisoners of the confident directions of some of their staff.
They told me they felt they had no choice because they’d never owned a newsagency before many of the business practices were new to them. It was only after one of the staff members left that they realised they had been given bad advice.
It’s not the frist time I’ve heard a story like this.
My advice to people buying their first newsagency is that they back themselves and immediately assert control over the business as the owner and manager.
It’s your business. You need to work out the best way to run it for yourself. Okay get advice along the way but make decisions for yourself. Don’t be told what to do. Don’t be made to feel inadequate in your own business. Sure you’ll make mistakes – embrace them as they’ll be excellent learning.
Because something has always been done a certain way does not mean it is right for the business.
Just because someone have been in the business for years more than you it does not mean they know what is right for the business.
Follow your instincts … it’s your money after all.
gizmo gifts on brunswick Street Fitzroy in Victoria is making excellent use of their windows. Indeed, this all red window was inspirational – presenting excellent VM ideas. It’s one of two windows the store has and they are using it to attract shoppers with a colour themed display. They are displaying product from a number of suppliers for excellent effect.
Here is the other window. This time with a white theme. Equally as effective as the red window. A good range of products appealing to a range of shopper interests and needs. Their colour theme is what attracts your eye to this and the red window display first up and then you notice the gifts. Very smart.
These are the types window displays we are competing with in the gift space. It’s my marketing tip today since for many newsagents, the window is a key part of marketing strategy.
Click on the image to see the detail.
We’re at a 75% sell through of the My Kitchen Rules cookbook with sales close to 50 units. We have achieved this from placement with food magazines, a couple of weeks with weeklies and the shop floor placement shown in the photo – next to the impulse Better Homes and Gardens stand.
These TV show tie-in one shots can be a challenge. There’s something to be said for going hard early in several locations on the shop floor.
In Newcastle last week I was walking around looking for a coffee shop when I noticed CB Coffee Cart, a mobile coffee business operating from the back of a van. They were busy filling orders for an office they were parked nearby.
The coffee was terrific and the service efficient and friendly – all key factors for success in a mobile business. I was impressed.
The operators of this business have gone out and created their own success. They’re not relying on a supplier to drive traffic nor are they relying on a brand. For a business in a competitive market it’s a challenge. From what I could tell they have nailed it.
The experience was on my mind this week as I reflected on how much we have relied and still in many instances do rely on traffic from agency lines in our businesses. We complain about these agency products yet they get feet walking into our shops. What if we had to rely totally on our own resources like CB Coffee Cart, what would we do differently? It’s a question worth asking ourselves.
And magazine publishers wonder why newsagents early return. This week we received a 71% increase in supply of Nexus magazine without any justification in our sales data and for no obvious reason in this issue of the magazine.
Our sales data indicates that no increase was warranted yet some person or process within Network Services thinks otherwise.
This is yet another example of gross oversupply over which newsagents have no control, oversupply that disadvantages us and impacts on our ability to effectively compete in the magazine space.
If this behaviour continues consumers will suffer form lack of competition.
Take note magazine publishers – if you want newsagents to keep selling magazines, fix this type of oversupply!
We are promoting the new Barbie partwork on the lease line, facing into the mall. Our weekend traffic is such that we’d expect to achieve most sales of this new title on the weekend – hence the placement.
We’re hoping that the Barbie brand will drag kids and their parents towards us who otherwise might not check us out in this visit to the centre.