I have left the newsagent wellbeing survey open a bit longer: to gather information about how you see yourself and to get newsagents thinking about their personal wellbeing. Please click here to take the survey. I’ll publish the results here.
The Zoodle store at Manchester Airport looks terrific. It stands out from the crowd. Looking at the model in detail, I am impressed with their leveraging of brands such as Disney, Peppa Pig, Where’s Wally and Thomas the Tank Engine. Look at the bullhead – stunning.
Zoodle encourages kids to read books and play with toys.
Central to the business in this transit locate is a strong value proposition. For example, a 3 for 2 offer on all children’s books.
We have a Zoodle at Melbourne airport but it does not look as good as the manchester store.
I am surprised we are not seeing more of these WH Smith created Zoodle stores.
In the UK this past week I saw several engagements by businesses on the issue of crime against retail businesses and their employees by shoppers.
I noticed engagement at Euston station in London, where I took the photo. The poster is a clear message on customer violence. Then, at the Better Retailing LIVE conference in Manchester, there was a discussion on a campaign to engage politicians in helping independent retailers to tackle retail crime.
The campaign seeks action on four main problem areas: shoplifting, vandalism, robbery and violent crime. The area of violent crime is what piqued my interest. There is a report that 74% of retailers have received verbal abuse when refusing the sale of tobacco to under age shoppers and 9% have been the victim of physical assault.
A campaign endorsed by a number of industry groups alls on politicians to help in a range of areas including, most important in my view: introducing legislation ensuring shop workers have the same legal protection from assault as emergency workers. The campaign is providing focus on an issue we could benefit from addressing in Australia.
Officeworks sells this Sellotape roll for $7.86. We have it in our newsagency, near two Officeworks locations, for $5.99. We use a convenience pricing model for stationery. Our buy price is $1.99 ex GST. I’d expect Officeworks to pay less.
I think this is a rip-off by Officeworks. The company spends heavily promoting that their prices are low and they won’t be beaten on price – yet they fail to ensure this is the case.
$7.86 for this roll of tape is a rip-off. It shows why people should not shop at Officeworks.
I have looked at many retail situations over the last week in London and Manchester. I plan to do a video covering some of the insights. In advance of that, I was taken with the simplicity of the fixtures in this pop-up coffee shop in Manchester. Their use of pallets is excellent, demonstrating that sometimes the simplest ideas are the best.
I think we spend too much on our shop fits, building complex and expensive memorials when we could use more found objects that are more flexible – like this coffee shop has done with pallets.
Frozen is the latest licence to take off, delivering extraordinary results around the world. From clothing to greeting cards to dolls to activity cards. There is more Frozen product for sale newsagencies in the UK than is currently the case in Australia. Those involved in the supply chain to Australian newsagents need to reduce the time it takes for us to have access to these products. Do this and we will sell more.
I liked some of the tools offered by News UK to retail newsagents for selling their newspapers which I saw at the Better Retailing LIVE 2014 conference in Manchester this week. For The Sun they had a spring-loaded shelf unit, a cor-flute floor display unit, a magnetic wall unit and the counter mat unit in the photo.
The wall and counter mat units have a cavity into which you can place a full newspaper for display under a strong cover. Very smart.
Check out the pitch on the top left corner of the Daily Express: Still 5p cheaper than the Daily Mail and ten times better. Newspaper publishers here pitch on price while in Australia there has been a race to the top in recent years as sales of declined. As to which approach is right – only time will tell.
I’m currently on an Etihad flight from Manchester to Abu Dhabi and am loving in-flight WiFi access. While Virgin Australia and Qantas continue with excuses as to why they cannot offer this, airlines like Etihad, Emirates, Delta and American Airlines have offered in-flight WiFi for years.
When booking, I give preference to airlines with in-flight WiFi. I place WiFi access ahead of in-flight catering and even, in some cases, seat amenity.
I travel a lot and being able to stay on top of work while away is important. Indeed, it makes for more enjoyable travel. With 24 hours of flying back to Australia I don’t want to lose a day catching up when I get home. Hence the decision to fly Etihad this trip.
Sitting here and enjoying WiFi I am also thinking about changes in and around my newsagency business that I may not have embraced and that may cause shoppers to choose other retailers. I don’t want to be a business owner who discovers a trend when it is too late.
While I understand some people like to disconnect fro the world, others don’t. For them, in-flight WiFi is a valuable point of difference. It is hard to know what is a valuable point of difference to people – but we just keep searching for it and tinkling about it.
As promised a few days ago, here are my thoughts on how newsagents can act on the supply of calendars by magazine distributors where we have little or no control on supply and where margins are considerably lower than what we can achieve ourselves through direct relationships.
If you have been supplied calendars that you do not want and are facing costs associated with storage and return, you could consider bringing the matter before an appropriate authority for review. However, before you start, think about what outcome you want – what is your core issue.
It is one thing to think a situation is unfair and another entirely to have proof to support your complaint. If you do not have proof that will stand up to scrutiny there is no point is pursuing the matter.
Read the contract you signed with the magazine distributor you are contemplating acting against – read what you agreed to.
PREPARE YOUR CASE. Have you been oversupplied? Have you been supplied stock when you previously said no? What do you want? What outcome are you seeking? A registrar, mediator or judge will want you to be clear in articulating what you want. So, if you are being oversupplied, what do you want?
I can imaging a complain being that the supply model makes your business uncompetitive as it forces on you costs that detract from the more efficient and profitable running of your business.
MOUNTING YOUR CASE. Where you make your complaint will differ from state and territory to state and territory. My suggestion is to start with an entry level forum like a Small Business Commissioner. In Victoria I have used the office of the SBC to resolve a several issues. It’s inexpensive and informal. It also shows the other side that you are serious about resolving the dispute. Also, it can be a reasonable precursor to more formal action of the matter is not resolved.
Here are the entry point places where I’d mount an initial complaint for mediation / resolution by state:
Don’t rush to make the complaint. Make sure you have your evidence, that you know what you want as an outcome and what you will do if mediation fails.
I’d be glad to help any newsagent through this process. Mounting an ill prepared, undocumented and emotion-charged case will not help those involved nor the channel more widely.
Each case will be unique. It needs to be from you, in your own words, speaking to your situation. Merely lodging a complaint will pressure the magazine distributor involved to be present for a mediation in your state. In some jurisdictions the numbers of complaints against companies are noted in reported to parliament.
SO, WHAT DO YOU WANT? You never go into any legal or quasi-legal fight without knowing for certain what you want. When it comes to calendar supply, I suggest that newsagents want one or more of:
REMEMBER. You will need to be prepared to sit across the table from people better resourced and probably more articulate than you. You will need to have a thick hide and be prepared for them to play the person and not the issue. You will need to be prepared to be public about your fight so that other newsagents can support you.
Here are some questions and answers:
Why should individual newsagents mount their case? My experience in business is that authorities are more likely to listen to complaints from individuals.
The distributors are bigger? For decades newsagents have felt and acted helpless. One day someone will act and show the way forward.
Will government care? The organisations I suggest in this post have been established by governments to provide low cost and structured places where disputes like these can be resolved.
What if publishers hate me? Who cares? They are part of the magazine distribution process and play a role in oversupply.
I am too small why should I do this? If you do suffer from calendar oversupply and complain about it, you need to have the guts to act on your complaint or stop complaining.
How can the magazine distributors Gotch and Network avoid this? Stop calendar oversupplying. It’s a behaviour they knowingly engage in. This is my preferred outcome – that they voluntarily supply based on what I ask for.
Why have the associations not done this? You’d need to ask them. Magazine / calendar oversupply is the issue newsagents rate as the most important they currently face.
FOOTNOTE: I will help any newsagent as much as I can to deal with magazine oversupply. Call me on 0418 321 338 or email me.
I participated in a round table discussion about tobacco products at the Better Retailing Live conference in manchester today and was surprised at the annual £2.5 cost to the UK economy of illegal tobacco and minimal interest from regulators and lawmakers.
The pack of Mayfair on the left in the photo is illegal product and the pack on the right is the legal product.
The other issue of the illegal tobacco is the health risk – it is far beyond the health risk of legal cigarettes. This alone should drive engagement by those in authority.
With tobacco products accounting for up to 50% of sales in some news / convenience businesses I would have expected stronger engagement by retailers pressuring government for resources necessary to stop the illegal trade.
Nowhere are the changes in the news distribution model more apparent than in The Times in the UK today.
Across a two-page spread the publisher makes the case for migrating consumers from print to digital. Today’s ad is not the first.
Central to the pitch is that it is about much more than news. It’s about belonging to a club with exclusive benefits and having access to the content you want updated live without the need to wait for the old delivery method to catch up.
Newsagents who wonder about the future of print ought to look at this ad carefully. It is a newspaper publisher making a pitch that is directly competitive to all involved in print newspaper distribution and sales. This is the publisher investing in their future.
If you look at the membership benefits and how they are pitched, the news itself is secondary. What an extraordinary shift!
Newspaper publishers are trying similar offers in Australia but they do not feel as structured and clear in focus as is this offer from The Times.
We must run our newsagency businesses with zero reliance on print newspapers and make the most of them every day we have them.
Click on the image to see the ad in detail.
Macarons are everywhere these days. These once hard to find tasty treats are being sold in many different businesses. This is why I liked the retailer I saw in London yesterday – they created a retail space that made the product the hero, that made their macarons have a sense of difference over the macarons you could find elsewhere. The gold cave fit out sets high expectations.
If our business is average in its layout and look shoppers will expect an average experience. If, on the other hand it is different and we own the difference, shoppers will expect a different experience, one they are more likely to remember.
This is crucial in retail today.
I have created a six-question newsagent wellbeing survey to gather information about how you see yourself and to get newsagents thinking about their personal wellbeing. Please click here to take the survey. I’ll publish the results here some time next week. The purpose of the survey is as much about you thinking about these things as it is about sharing your thoughts.
I witnessed first-hand the abuse of a newspaper / bottled water promotion at a WH Smith outlet in London yesterday. The customer in front of me wanted to purchase a bottle of water and some other items. The sales person said if they purchased the Daily Telegraph the water was free. The customer didn’t ant The Daily Telegraph. The staff member scanned the newspaper and set it aside – making the water free. I purchased the copy of the newspaper already scanned as I wanted water too. From an audit perspective I wonder if that’s two sales or one – as there was only one reader.
All these games being used to drive newspaper sales dilute the value of the newspaper and thereby dilute the value of advertising.
MenKind is a network of more than forty gift shops catering to male shoppers and those who buy for males. Their range is a mixture of funks, tech and sports. Close to half the stock I saw is available from suppliers in Australia. While many Aussie newsagents say it’s hard to source gifts for males MenKind is a business that is doing it well and packaging it in a smart way.
I have created a six-question newsagent wellbeing survey to gather information about how you see yourself and to get newsagents thinking about their personal wellbeing. Please click here to take the survey. I’ll publish the results here some time next week. The purpose of the survey is as much about you thinking about these things as it is about sharing your thoughts.
Outside Hamleys toy shop on Regent Street in London yesterday a guy stoop on a podium making bubbles. He did this with a smile and some pizzaz for ten minutes and went back inside the shop to another location to demonstrate something else they sell in-store.
I am sure some people entered the shop because of the bubbles.
There are plenty of things newsagents sell that could be demonstrated in this way. We could bounce super balls, play with kinetic sand, squeeze goo, build jigsaws, doodle on a white board, doodle on a massive pad, sing along to sound cards, hug a bear.
If you don’t have products you could demonstrate as effectively as the bubbles, source them. Choose products specifically to enable you to play out the front of your shop. Choose products that speak to how you want people to view your newsagency.
If you do decide to demonstrate products out the front of your shop, make sure that the in-store experience will meet expectations set by what people see out the front.
I loved what I saw at Hamleys yesterday. The theatre out the front of the store was matched by plenty more inside.
Footnote: I decided last week to write about being interactive with what we sell. The Hamleys experience offered a perfect photo opportunity to illustrate my point.
What would happen in your newsagency business if you didn’t turn up for work for a day or a few days? I appreciate that for many newsagents the shop would not open as they run the business alone or almost alone. My question is for the others, the newsagents who are not rostered on as rust but who turn up each day to run the business.
What would happen if you disappeared without planning or notice for a few days? Would the business continue to function? Would it miss you?
If your business would miss you if you disappeared for a few days you have a problem. Your newsagency should have processes and policies in place that allow it to operate as you would like without you being there.
I think the newsagency channel has too many managers. I am certain we have more than our competitors. Petrol, convenience, supermarkets, department stores and other corporate retailers a lower ratio of in-store senior management cost per $100,000 in sales revenue than your average newsagency. For our higher investment in in-store management we have less to show for it.
Put in place in your business structures and processes so that the business runs well with you attuning a few hours a week. Use the free time to push the business way beyond where it is at today.
The presence of electronic cigarettes in retail in the UK is big, very big, compared to Australia. There are specialist retailers like the VIP outlet in the photo as well as placement of e-digs in existing retailers. Plus there is plenty being spent on outdoor advertising and sport sponsorships – amid controversy. Tighter restrictions on electronic cigarettes in Australia currently reduce the value of this level of investment. What has surprised me the most in the UK is the stand alone e-cog retail businesses. I wonder if that is more about education as this stage of the product’s life.
In the UK over the last couple of days I have seen several examples of exclusive pricing of magazines for supermarkets. In the photo are two examples: InStyle and Cosmopolitan – the mini version in each case. The publishers have printed on the cover EXCLUSIVE TO TESCO. This is disappointing to see as it’s a hard position from which to retreat. It also does not make sense for publishers have favourite retail channels.
Kind of related: the Tesco share price has fallen to an 11 year low on the back of poor performance. Investment sage Warren Buffet was moved to say his investment in the company was a huge mistake.
