Newsagents this week received more AFL and NRL trading card stock when plenty of their initial allocation remains unsold in newsagency businesses.
Gotch has the sales data to know what remains unsold. Their allocations people and/ or processes appear to have ignored this evidence prior to proceeding to supply m0re stock.
I have heard from several newsagents who shared exampled of blatant oversupply. The costs of this oversupply include the costs of labour, space and freight – as the cards need to be returned, at the cost of the newsagent.
That we are having to raise this in 2018 is extraordinary.
I suspect oversupply of AFL and NRL cards is not an issue for the retailers supplied by Gotch that compete with newsagents. If my suspicion is right, newsagents are commercially disadvantaged by the Gotch treatment. It makes them less competitive.
Gotch has the data to facilitate fair and accurate supply decisions. Any inventory drop after the initial supply should only be on the basis of sales. This is easy enough to do for any company that has an even half decent IT system in place.
Disadvantaging small business retailers like newsagents as happens with the current AFL / NRL card supply model needs to stop. Newsagents will stop it by quitting magazines, as some have already.
To be clear: I have seen data from newsagents showing there is no justification whatsoever in supply and sales data for AFL / NRL trading cards yet where Gotch has sent new, unneeded, stock. This is Gotch doing exactly what they have said countless times they will not do. I thin it is deliberate, wilful.
Other magazine publishers should take note. If you see retail outlets pull out of magazines, it is because of behaviour such as I have outlined here. You will be impacted by oversupply situations like this. beyond cutting magazine space or getting out of magazines altogether, newsagents will also early return to mitigate cash flow challenges that flow from oversupply.
Magazine publishers should agitate Gotch on this issue. Their commercial relationship will be more influential with Gotch than newsagent agitation has been. Gotch needs to understand the financial impact on their business of oversupply to newsagents.
Dividing my SOH by my weekly sales it would be March 2020 before I sell out of AFL cards. Yet when I tried to early return some I was told I couldn’t because there such good sellers.
You would think if their such a salable item G&G would be falling over themselves to take stock that isn’t going to be sold and redistributing to stores that need it.
If your going to promote your company as the “Magazine experts” it probably a good idea not to act in such a dumb way.
anyone knows what happens to GG warehouse at Moorebank? looks like they are moving.