This photo shows one of the Scotch stands in a regional Staples store in the US. I like this tape stand a lot. I think it could work for us as long as it’s to placed everywhere.
I would certainly give this Scotch Expressions Tape stand a crack as I think the range appeals way beyond the traditional stationery shopper’s interests.
Click on the image for a bigger version and see for yourself the broader range.
I like this floor display unit of four different gift packaged pens I saw in a regional Staples store in the US last week.
While we usually get gift pen offers for key seasons, we are rarely offered a floor display unit with four pen types each packaged with a value-add gift. This is smart packaging which would drive pen and refill sales for us I am sure.
There really is only one way to reorder stock for your business and that is by using your computer system as it is only this approach that removes human intervention from the process.
Walking through the shop and making a list is a bad move.
Letting a supplier order for you allows their business needs to be ahead of your business needs.
Ordering based on memory is not smart.
Yes, use your newsagency software to generate an order for you and follow this. You will most likely find that your inventory investment for existing categories declines and that your return on investment increases. This would be good news!
I have written here many times about the need for a USP, a Unique Selling Proposition, for your newsagency business.
It is equally important you talk about this uniqueness, that it defines the narrative of your business.
Face to face, on social media and elsewhere, talk about your uniqueness, use this as a platform through which to market your business. Use this to show all you are in contact with why shopping with you is better and more appropriate than them shopping with a competitor.
I appreciate this concept will be challenging for some. Take your time, work out your story. Test it. Once you have it down, go for it and expect to attract new people looking at your business to engage with what is unique about your business.
I love this simple yet effective use of a tree brand for featuring greeting cards in a shop I visited this week. They have slices slots into the branch and placed cards in those slots. This is a terrific way you can display cards off location, to attract impulse purchases – since there will be people in the shop for other items who could purchase cards if you disrupt their shop visit with cards presented differently.
Sometimes the best visual merchandising ideas are the simplest.
Click on the image for a much larger version. Email me if you would like photos from other angles.
I have suggested here before that newsagents ought to invite customers to note what they like about a season or like about the local area – as a way of diving engagement. I saw this first-hand in a cafe at Lake Geneva, Wisconsin a couple of days ago.
In the cafe you can take a slip of paper with My favourite think to do in springtime in Lake Geneva is… and you write in a response and place it on the pin board at the entrance.
As the photo shows there are plenty of responses.
This is a good example of a local business engaging practically with the area in which they operate.
Here is a close up of one comment on the noticeboard. All the comments are practical and local. Every one is a vote for the local area and a support for the business. I like this a lot. It would be easy for us to do.
This photo shows the typical range of magazine titles you will see in a drug store in the US, the type of retail business which most closely resembles a newsagency. The unit holds 156 regular sides titles. In Australia, where subscriptions account for a lower proportion of overall circulation than in the US, I think 156 titles is too few for a destination magazine store.
Australian supermarkets carry around this number, sometimes up too 200 titles while convenience and petrol outlets carry considerably fewer.
Considering sell through rates, the cost of retail space and the opportunity cost of this, my feeling is that the ideal range for a city or suburban newsagency is between 500 and 700 titles – around four of the units in the photo. In regional and rural areas the number could be somewhere between 800 and 1,000 titles depending on the costs of the business.
A good step we can take to controlling supply is controlling space allocation. This is best done with flexible deep magazine shelves on which we allocate one pocket per title and advising the distributors in writing of the total number of their titles we have space for. The type of fixture in the photo is ideal for this. It is what I use in my shops.
This photo shows a tweet from Kikki.K yesterday pitching Father’s Day gift items. Note the use of yellow. This connects with their current yellow window display that I wrote about here on the weekend.
The tweet is a good example of consistency in marketing, especially consistency of a focussed pitch from the shop to social media. This helps leverage the investment in a themed promotion.
Note: it is Father’s Day in the US on June 21.
Two suppliers have mentioned that they have been told WH Smith is close to adding between 20 and 25 newsagency locations to its Australian store fleet. That is the extent of the information – so no clarity whether the new rooftops are through acquisition or store openings.
Another supplier mentioned losing considerable business as a result of acquisition by WH Smith as the company had its own sources for products usually supplied by this supplier. They were left with considerable staccato shift.
Winter is here. It’s months before the next major traffic generating season. Now more than ever we need to make our businesses appealing. This week I’ll share some tips.
Practical ideas to warm up your newsagency this winter with sunshine.
Winter can give people the blues. These ideas are about pushing back on that, having fun and running your business differently this season to others.
Newspaper subscriptions in the US are important as shown in the tweet about what Arthur Sulzberger, Publisher of the New York Times said at the World News Congress this week. That growth in subscriptions from 5% – 10% 20 years ago to over 50% now is extraordinary.
Subscriptions are vital to newspapers. They provide the best opportunity for migration to digital. While retailers are not in that model, newspaper publishers need to serve their needs first. This push also puts the needs of journalism ahead of ours and I am fine with that.
We need to be accepting on this transition as it will happen regardless of anything we can influence.
Newsagents offering a gift wrapping service may find this report from the US Consumer Reports interesting. What they note about major US retailers charging for the service is also true in Australia.
If your service is free, now could be the time to reconsider.
Finding fans is tough for indie musicians as they don’t have the support of the marketing machines of massive labels to drive airplay and attract fans. Their success comes from many small steps, plenty of ‘local’ activity. The same is true for us small business newsagents in our competition with supermarkets and others who sell what we sell but in a mass way.
I was thinking about this just now when I saw this tweet from south-west London indie band Elephant & Castles following a small item in the UK music magazine NME:
We got some @NME love this week. Read it the old fashioned way from your newsagents. Thanks @NME_Radar @JonHatchman
I love their support of newsagents.
Their success will come from many small steps – lots of playing gigs in small locations, getting their name out fan by fan. It’s true for us. Greater success for us will come from many small steps attracting shoppers for unique and special interests.
The challenge for our channel is that we have many newsagents who have not had to do this and here they are toward the end of their time owning a business having to learn new skills and reinvent their businesses. That is a difference between many newsagents and indie musicians – for the indie musician they are starting out and stepping into their challenges of their own accord.
I know I am getting a bit off track here. The point I want to make is we can be successful if we rely on many small steps for our success rather than fewer big things. Like the indie band playing many gigs to find their success.
I have been looking at retail businesses in the US this week and have noticed several with 2016 calendars out on the shop floor. While this feels too early to me, they say it is common with special interest higher-priced calendars like this art range.
We put our calendars out in August and now I am wondering if that is a bit late for some titles such as those imported (like this range) at least.
I have added more dates for the Newsagency of the Future 2015 workshop series:
I promise a challenging and worthwhile couple of ours together as we explore what we know, what might be and what we can do about it.
Newsagents and others involved in newspaper distribution in South Australia are hearing reports that the Adelaide Advertiser will cease its print edition on one or more days of the week in response the financial return on those days.
One source is reportedly a representative Advertiser Newspapers who has spoken with newsagents.
While I expect such a move to happen, not only in Adelaide but elsewhere in Australia where the economics demand, I note we have heard this report previously and News Corp. denied it previously. I mention it today as the report is fresh from this week and I thought people would like to know.
Winter is here. It’s months before the next major traffic generating season. Now more than ever we need to make our businesses appealing. This week I’ll share some tips.
Practical ideas to warm up your newsagency this winter with optimism.
This idea is hard as it is more about mindset and storytelling than anything else.
The optimism in our businesses starts with us.
We are promoting the 3D Create and Print partwork launch with this display on the lease line, facing into the mall.
The display is capped with a 3D printer provided by the publisher through Gordon and Gotch as part of a newsXpress promotion for this launch. The items in the front of the were created in-store using the printer.
The 3D printer and the printed items add good theatre to support the launch.
This partwork launch is an excellent opportunity for our channel to connect with 3D printing, making is more relevant to those into this as a hobbyist. I am running a facebook promotion to reach way outside the shop to attract shoppers who could be interested in 3D printing and locking in for this series.
I appreciate there are challenges with partwork supply. Almost every time I track this down the source of the problem is the publisher and not the distributor.
I remain a supporter of partworks in part because of the traffic they generate through TV and other campaigns.
I am seeing more newspaper publishers offering more aggressive offers for digital access. The latest in this push from The New York Times being promoted through Twitter. I signed up and sure enough I have free digital access for eight weeks.
I declined the 99c offer to extend out to 12 weeks as I want to see what they do at the end of 8 weeks.
Publishers are on a race to the bottom with these offers. This is why discussions about other models to fund professional journalism are vital. A health democracy depends on strong independent journalism. The financial model at the core of this for more than 100 years has collapsed.
Mark Latham loves to goad people into debate. This is what Fairfax pays him for from his op-ed pieces in the Australian Financial Review.
Latham was wrong in his column on the weekend when he wrote:
Self-evidently, if small businesses were any good they would’t be small. They would be big monstrous things with massive levels of profit, employment and economic grunt.
A good business owner, large or small, spreads risk. The best way to do this is across many revenue points (customers or products). Businesses relying on one big revenue generator carry a huge risk as do economies – look at the doom and gloom forecasts for Australia flowing from the mining downturn.
Our economy will be stronger from 10,000 small businesses with combined revenue equal to one large national business.
While I am no economist, I suspect and economy will benefit more from many small businesses than one big business generating the same revenue. Here’s why:
Latham goads further with:
Small businesses, in effect, are the garden gnomes of the modern economy – purely ornamental and totally dispensable.
I don’t think Mark Latham actually believes this. If he does he is an ignorant small business bigot, he ought to work in some small businesses and see the world from here. He should see first hand local community engagement that is unique to small business. he ought to spend time in the office and see first-hand the economic value from wages paid, suppliers paid, rent paid, profits made. Sure, most small businesses make only slim profits – but does that matter? I know many small business owners who are not in business to get financially rich – their businesses make them personally rich.
I’ve owned my software company for 34 years and my retail newsagency business for 19 years. Both businesses have been and continue to be considerably more than ornamental for me, all who have worked in them and all who have done business with them.
The best business success in large and small businesses is that which comes from many small steps as it is this success which will be more sustainable. The same is true for an economy. Australia will benefit from more small businesses not fewer. They do not need massive handouts, only the occasional reaffirming encouragement like the instant asset write off in the latest federal budget.
While I appreciate Fairfax runs Latham’s pieces to encourage debate, in this piece on small business he offended a business community that is vital to Australia.
Winter is here. It’s months before the next major traffic generating season. Now more than ever we need to make our businesses appealing. This week I’ll share some tips.
Practical ideas to warm up your newsagency this winter with laughter.
All simple ideas focussed on the fun and positive and to help people forget it is winter.
Prior to the last federal election I commented about the small business policy of the Greens compared to the major parties. I felt the policy of the Greens was better. I still do.
I reconsidered this recently following the federal budget small business initiatives. It is interesting to see what the Greens proposed and what the government has subsequently announced.
For all their attacking of the Greens, the federal government has borrowed heavily from the policy work done by the Greens. I would have like to see the government acknowledge this.
