Early engagement by police helps catch shoplifters
While this story is from the US, from the small midwest town of Burlington Wisconsin, it reflects how early engagement by police on social media can help apprehend shoplifting suspects.
Here is their first post and the photo:
Here is their next post with good news about identification:
This story also interests me because of the size of what was soles – large rolls of wire, so big they had to use a trolley to steal them.
Credit card surcharges
Check out this story about credit card surcharges in the New York Post. But be sure to read the whole article as it is fascinating and will, I am sure resonate with plenty here.
Monthly real life titles grow market for newsagents
The monthly real life titles launched in recent times have delivered a net increase in magazine purchases. That is, they have not taken revenue from their associated titles in the magazine segment.
Looking at basket data for the That’s Life Mega Monthly, for example, I see that shopper often purchasing That’s Life in the same transaction. This is goon news that we can leverage through tactical placement.
A couple of ways to maximise the opportunity of the monthly titles are: place the monthly next to the weekly; and, if room permits, pitch both at the counter for a few days at least.
While magazines overall remain challenged, there are some segment level opportunities that we can leverage as engaged retailers. What we can do is different and more useful to the titles than any supermarket will do and this is something publishers could notice.
Beyond real life, categories like crosswords, current affairs (The Monthly, Quarterly Essay etc), health and gardening all benefit from tactical engagement in my experience.
The importance of using software for managing pays
I urge all newsagents with employees to use accounting software for managing pays and producing payslips. The structure offered through this process could help you avoid issues down the track as the software creates and manages a paper trail.
There is a situation in our channel right now where a paper trail would have been helpful. No paper pay slips were issued, allowing for a Fair Work complaint that resolving is likely to be expensive for the business owner.
Payroll software or accounting software with payroll is not expensive in the overall compliance cost for business.
Getting this right matters in terms of employer obligations to employees, being able to respond to fair Work queries, for taxation purposes and to satisfy questions from franchisors as they navigate their reporting and knowledge requirements under the relatively new federal legislation that came out of the 7-Eleven pay scandal.
Click here to access the advice from the Fair Work Ombudsman website on pay slips.
Newsagents and the election
I missed this tweet from three weeks ago about News Corp., newsagents and the election.
While thick piles of Murdoch papers sit untouched in supermarkets and newsagents, US @NewsCorp still uses these posters to pump their propaganda headlines into our main streets. Ask your local newsagent or supermarket to stop putting NewsCorp posters outside during #AusVotes2019 pic.twitter.com/jZgasHr86v
— Alt-Rupert (@TheMurdochTimes) April 3, 2019
The Daily Sydney Morning Herald Telegraph
This is hilarious. As reported in The Guardian, today’s Daily Telegraph has some content from The Sydney Morning Herald.
Did you miss magazine deliveries today?
I have heard from some newsagents of magazine deliveries set for today from Ovato not being delivered. As things go with Ovato, newsagents are left without stock and the likelihood of lost stock not being replaced.
While not getting the stock is frustrating in itself, there is a cost to newsagents who rostered additional staff to handle magazines when on a Wednesday they would not usually have them rostered on. So, lost revenue and additional labour costs.
Ovato is having a bad April.
Customer feedback can help us improve the channel
On the newsXpress website, any customer of any newsXpress store can provide feedback on their shopping experience. often, feedback does not relate to a newsXpress store. Here is one such example. The person leaving the feedback contacted us the next day apologising and indicating it was for another newsagency not connected with newsXpress.
I share it here as it reflects the value of making providing feedback easy and the interest shoppers have in sharing their feedback.
My 17yr old son ventured into your newsagency enquiring as to whether the store had a key ring. Tues 16th April 1:50pm The lady (Older lady with blonde hair or partially blonde) advised my son the store didn’t have any then added “I don’t know what your fuckin talking about “. My son apologised and thanked her before leaving as he felt embarrassed. This behaviour and conduct is inappropriate and uncalled for particularly when speaking to a young person who was polite. Perhaps you need to address the conduct of your staff and the unnecesssry use of foul language. Poor customer service in any case .
Whether we like it or not, we are all judged by the experience in any store in our channel, especially businesses with lotteries as this is the most unifying product category in the channel, setting shopper expectations.
Making providing feedback easy helps us be more in touch with shopper experiences, even those not in our own stores.
Coles gets the Mother’s Day card pitch right
Coles, on Swan Street Richmond, has a solid approach to Mother’s Day. I saw three floor units: next to stationery, at the checkout and at store exit. Appropriately apart from each other. Multiple locations makes sense if they want to capture the impulse purchase. We can learn from what they are doing.
Bumper editions have people questioning print newspapers
A couple of newsagents have emailed me about customer comment regarding Easter bumper editions.
One said they had a long-term home delivery customer saying it is time for them to switch to digital and that this surprised them and got them thinking about the future of print.
Another contacted me to share frustration of customer complaints about the in-store product without access to support forms the publisher to handball the complaints.
This copy of AFR Weekend has been on sale since April 18. Five days.
Regulars here would know, for years I have seen no upside in print newspapers. While I sell then and engage with the requisite in-store promotions, I see tho upside in terms of traffic of margin dollars contribution. Not having home delivery for more than ten years now has saved me from questions abut things like bumper editions.
The paper medium is inefficient for news and analysis. It is expensive to produce and distribute, with many distribution newsagents making a value contribution beyond what is reasonable.
The only reason many print editions exist today is to provide a time related pathway for publishing companies. There is no upside for newsagents. In the meantime, newsagents deal with questions like some have had over Easter.
Okay, I get that for many, newspapers provide terrific foot traffic. The thing is, engaged newsagents should be well advanced in alternative sources of traffic, sources with upside rather than the certain downside of print.
Easter break marketing opportunity
With so many away on school holidays, this long long weekend is a good opportunity for some fun in the shop. It is an opportunity to play away from what has been traditional for the business.
I was talking about this with a newsagent a few days ago, about the opportunity to try something really crazy that they thought they could never do in their shop. I think these couple of days are the perfect opportunity to play, to experiment.
Now, more than ever, there are no rules about what we can and can’t do in our businesses, or at least the parts of the businesses retailers control.
It could be a new shop floor layout, a new in-store service, a different traffic-attracting acting or more. whatever it is, these days are ideal for play.
My point about this weekend is – if you are open and the town is quiet, do something crazy for you and your business, to find what might be next in terms of the embrace of change.
Free Daily Telegraph for Warringah residents?
The Guardian has a report today about The Daily Telegraph from News Corp. being delivered free to homes in Warringah.
The most mysterious event in the Sydney seat, where the former prime minister Tony Abbott is fighting a challenge from the independent Zali Steggall, is the arrival of unsolicited copies of the Telegraph, which began in late March.
Residents in Manly, Queenscliff, Curl Curl and Fairlight said they had begun intermittently receiving copies of the News Corp tabloid newspaper, despite not being subscribers. The Telegraph has run a number of stories that would not have delighted Steggall’s campaign.
News Corp. responded:
A spokeswoman for News Corp said a small number of homes had been involved in recent sampling activity in the Manly area, which had now ceased.
“Sampling activity is a standard marketing practice to introduce products to potential new customers,” she said. “All of our sampling activity is based on our market research.”
Ovato magazine returns file corruption returns challenge
Ovato (Gotch) has sent this email to some newsagents today:
Dear Retailer,
Due to a corrupted file a number of EDI returns were unable to be processed by us. We have identified the agents with missing returns and we are emailing you as we need you to re-send your EDI returns from 4th or 5th April through xchangeit as soon as possible so we can process your returns.
You can resend your returns from your POS or by choosing to resend the file through the Xchangeit website.
https://xchangeit.lpages.co/xit-main/#info-for-newsagents/
Log on using your account number and password
Choose the file and click on resend.Regards
National Contact Centre
Retail Distribution
I’m told 400 newsagents have been affected. Ovato sent the email without advising software companies. Why does this matter? The software companies are the first line of contact. had they been forewarned they could have been proactive with advice rather than taking calls and scrambling to understand what has actually happened.
This is an own goal by Ovato, with companies like my own Tower Systems left to fund the cost of helping newsagents.
If Ovato did not inform XchangeIT then the failure is even greater.
Asking the files to be resent is problematic operationally. It can be done. However, getting 400 newsagents to do this is the issue, especially this week before Easter.
Given how Ovato handles returns claims disputes this could cause a significant waste of time and money for newsagents.
UPDATE 18/4/19 5:59AM:
The help desk traffic from this is immense already. While it is easy to resend the file, many have never done it and, naturally, they call for support to make sure they are not making a mistake.
What a failure by Ovato. Not the original problem and that can happen. No, the issue here is the poor communication by people at Ovato. They decided to not advise the software companies or XchangeIT before advising newsagents. That decision added workload to everyone and added unnecessary stress for newsagents.
UPDATE: 18/4/19 8:41am. Tower Systems now has the list of affected newsagents and is therefore better equipped to provide advice. That we had to chase this and did not get it until now is appalling.
Licenced product opportunities are valuable
Every year it is the same … licenced products perform well. Even movies that perform to average numbers at the bios office support products that sell well in retail. Then, there are the stand out licences, on which we can bank results, like Harry Potter.
Detective Pikachu looks good. The early indications are good due to the multi-faceted engagement with the licence – game, movie and the Switch.
We use licenced products in my stores to attract shoppers who would not usually think about us for plush and game related products. The licenced products usually lead to other purchases as we stock up what we can to play deep into a licence. This is where having supplier relationships beyond the traditional helps.
I especially like it when I can drive purchases from traditional categories, like cards, from a licence play. Unfortunately, too often, there is a lag for licences from that category.
To newsagents not playing in the licence space, I suggest you look at it. The new traffic opportunities are worth it.
SHOCK: The high cost of self-service checkout theft
The New Daily has the story: theft is estimated to cost Australian retailers $4.5 billion a year.
Self service has not been quite the gain the big retailers expected. Wow.
Retail is about customer service. Good customer service is a human-based function.
A new incarnation of Zoodle by WH Smith
When I first saw the Zoodle retail format by UK newsagent chain WH Smith in 2012 it was primarily a kid-focussed store, at Melb0urne International Airport. A week ago, I saw a new incarnation of Zoodle, at the Virgin terminal in the Brisbane domestic airport.
This latest version of Zoodle I got to see is quite different to what I had seen before. It is primarily airport convenience in focus, but with a presence of items for kids as well as some games. It certainly looks different to the usual airport convenience or news related retail, but on its shelves it offers the same products – candy, travel items, phone SIMs chilled drinks as well as coffee. Kids are represented, but not significantly.
I like the layout, it is open and easy to shop. However, it remains traditional retail in approach. I didn’t see them embracing of the advances I have seen in US convention hence and airport retail businesses.
The Brisbane airport store does not look like it fits neatly with the pitch on the WH Smith website:
Zoodle will send you on your travels with a smile. We have a great selection of children’s books, toys, gifts and games to keep young travellers happy, plus gadgets, snacks and treats for all. Whether you’re looking to keep the kids entertained on the flight, or looking for the perfect gift, we’ve got everything for the young and the young at heart.
I wonder if what we are seeing is an evolution of Zoodle, ahead of what is on the corporate website.
I also wonder if we will see it emerge outside of transit locations. On the hah street, this would be a fresh look – in my view, more interesting than the tired 7-Eleven.
Is your counter set for Easter?
The next four days offer excellent opportunity for impulse purchase at the counter. My advice is to leverage this with easy to purchase product opportunities placed at the counter while at the same time reducing visual noise from other products at the counter that are not as relevant in the next four days.
What do I mean?
- Take everything off your counter from the customer side.
- Rebuild the office with a small number of easter -themed products.
- Have at least one offer to which your staff refer, every transaction.
- Include in the product offer one or tow cards.
I know of plenty of newsagents who are experiencing growth from Easter. This is most likely to ha[en if your actively engage.
Do what you usually do and you will get your usual result.
Are you ready for six weeks of opinions?
One thing is for certain during election campaigns, people are more likely to share their opinions across the counter. This is especially true of newspaper shoppers making their purchase and commenting on election related stores they notice on the front page.
While most comments are harmless, there are some delivered with venom, hate even, that require effort to listen to without commenting back.
One way to diffuse the situation could be to have a politics free zone established and extract a ‘fine’ for people who do comment. Have two or three charity tins for people to donate a coin as a ‘fine’ for them commenting. the charities you collect for could be those of prominent local candidates – the donations are a way of voting.
betterRetailing covers Shoptalk learnings
betterRetailing, a UK news source and indie small business retailers, has covered six key takeaways I tapped into from participating Shoptalk this year.
Of all the takeaways, the one I find my self thinking about the most in the context of the Australian newsagency channel is this one:
4. Don’t let history define you
UK and Australian newsagents have a shared heritage in historically being a key part of newspaper distribution. We have all suffered from declining circulation across the formerly successful categories. To be successful in the future, we need to find a new personality that will renew or refresh our customer base. The CTN model has already faded, and convenience is changing with food to go. The opportunity that your space and your people offer are the most valuable asset you have for future success, not what you used to sell.
I am drawn tonic because I see it happen many times, people making decisions about their businesses because of history that they have either experienced or heard about.
History is interesting but it is not ur future. Our future could be a 90 degree turn away from our past or more even. That is what is so exciting about the newsagency channel today – the path for each of us in the channel is ours to set. Now more than ever we have a future that is set by us.
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