People spending $20 or more at an IGA supermarket are offered a free newspaper.
I noticed it at an IGA in suburban Melbourne today, a store that is less than 10 metres from a newsagency.
A staffer at the IGA said most don’t want the free paper and that they have been told to throw left over papers in the trash.
News Corp. has released results for the latest quarter. Embedded in the results is this information relating, in part, to Australia.
Revenues in the quarter decreased $99 million, or 8%, as compared to the prior year, reflecting a $35 million, or 3%, negative impact from foreign currency fluctuations. Within the segment, Dow Jones revenues grew 6%, while revenues at News America Marketing and News Corp Australia declined 10% and 11%, respectively. Revenues at News UK declined 22%, primarily due to the absence of the $48 million net benefit related to the exit from the gaming partnership in the prior year. Adjusted Revenues for the segment decreased 5% compared to the prior year.
Advertising revenues declined 8% compared to the prior year, of which $15 million, or 3%, was related to the negative impact from foreign currency fluctuations. The remainder of the decline was driven by weakness in the print advertising market, primarily in Australia, and lower home delivered revenues, which include free-standing insert products, at News America Marketing.
No real surprise in the results. Publishing is tough. Print news is tough.
Glenn Dyer at Crikey provided some commentary:
There was nowhere to hide for the Murdochs’ News Corp in the three months to September 30.
Every part of the business saw double digit falls in earnings as a perfect storm of negatives hit the company hard, including, as CEO Robert Thomson described it, “a sluggish Australian economy” and “harsh economic conditions”.
It was not a quarter to boast about, with some of the only positives being a rise in digital subscriptions for Dow Jones and for the Foxtel streaming service Kayo.
The cover price of The Observer in Gladstone increases 60 cents, 31.6%, November 18, to $2.50. News Corp. announced this to newsagents on October 30.
This is an extraordinary move by a company that for decades resisted calls from newsagents for price increases, a key mechanism through which newsagents could make more money from their product.
Now, with newspaper print sales in terminal decline and newsagent revenue increase disconnected from the cover price, the company announces this extraordinary price increase.
Maybe they are testing a higher price rise and customer reaction in this small market prior to roll-0ut elsewhere.
Maybe they are testing to see if it helps with migration to digital, which has to be a goal for any newspaper publisher these days and is certainly a goal for News if you look at their marketing focus on pitching digital.
Newsagent commission under the new price will be a paltry 17.2%, loess than a living wage from the sale of papers.
The letter from News Corp. to newsagents demonstrates, in my view, a detachment by the company from newsagents. There is no explanation, no nuance. It’s not a letter written to a partner.
News Corp. is not treating newsagents in a socially responsible way. A company that claims to be for everyday Australians in their pages are not for newsagents, who are everyday Australians, mum and dad small business owners.
We recently re-negotiated insurance coverage for your 3 retail shops and achieved a 30% cut in insurance costs. We reviewed the needs of each business and set about discussing these with our broker, the same broker we have used for years.
Here are some of the changes we made to coverage:
The critical factor for us was that in all our years in retail we have never made a claim on insurance. Then one time our shop was flooded, we claimed against the builder for the landlord for disruption and inventory damage.
The renegotiation process took an hour. Time well spent for the saving achieved.
With the news last week of Woolworths reportedly underpaying employees by hundreds of millions of dollars, I published a thread on Twitter that seeks to bring some challenges relating to this matter into focus. You’ll need to click on the link to see all the tweets in the thread.
Journalists writing about the underpayment of retail employees should read an award, like the General Retail Award: https://t.co/6kYacHl9mA This tweet is not an excuse, rather it is a sharing of important research on this topic.
— Mark Fletcher🧢 (@emef) October 31, 2019
Note: I have spoken with Fairwork folk about this several times, the most recent being 7pm Friday last week. That conversation was the clearest, the most unambiguous about classifications. The test is what they were hired for, what makes up most of their duties. If they fit with level 1, then that is their pay rate. However, nothing stops a challenge, where you will have to defend your position.
Videos rule on social media right now thanks to better facilities on Instagram and Facebook and exponential growth in platforms such as TicToc – even though this is not yet really being leveraged for business.
The best videos are those that are funny. Successful, too, are videos that do not overtly sell. In fact, selling should be the last goal you have – even though it is the business measure of success.
Create what people enjoy and love and selling will happen as a result.
I shoot videos on my iPhone and use different platforms and Apps for editing, depending on what I want to achieve. I don’t overthink them as all social media content is disposable – consumed quickly and moved on from, shared if you are lucky, to reach more people.
Here is a video I shot recently at one of my stores. I then used iView on my Mac to wash the video for a particular visual tint I felt was effective. I also used iMovie to remove the original sound recorded with the video. I then used a premium service, Promo, to add text and then lay an appropriate licence-free music track underneath to create what you can see and hear.
newsXpress Knox City – Christmas.
This video shows a decorated tree we have in-store. It is part of our entry into Christmas 2019, located on the lease line.
I made the video to demonstrate a different look for Christmas compared to what shoppers might expect from a newsagency. For my stores I am keen to embrace opportunities to pitch in ways that are not traditional for newsagency shingle businesses.
On Saturday while at the shop I shot videos for five topics / product categories. For three of these I shot two videos – to give be options for how I could use them. I mention this as some videos work well as a square frame while others work better in a landscape frame.
I appreciate all this feels like hard work. The thing is, it can be successful work. A video I shot a week ago and used during the week reached thousands of people and directly generated more than $1,000 in online revenue. All from a time investment of less than 15 minutes.
Okay, not all videos deliver this payback. indeed, not even a quarter. However, when it does happen it propels you to do more and do better.
If you are not using videos on social media I encourage you to experiment with the medium.
Andrew Yang is running for the nomination of the Democratic Party for the upcoming US presidential election. He is not a politician. He has a business and not for profit background. One of his policies is interesting as it flows from challenges being experienced in retail in the US. He calls the policy The American Mall Act. I am sharing this here as there may be some interested in this topic.
Setting your sale price for new inventory items is challenging. There are many factors to consider: margin, what an item will sell for, your sales volume need, the labour cost of each sale and more.
In considering what to sell something for, ask your colleagues in-store how much would you pay for this? This can be a good guide, or at least a data point to add to your thinking.
Do your research, too, and see what others nearby sell the item or similar items for. Research online too, locally and elsewhere.
Finally, consider carefully your objectives for the product – is this a volume play or a margin play?
Your pricing choice may not be as clear-cut as it would seem. For example, you could set a high price knowing that with a discount voucher on purchase the item appears to cost less. You might have volume pricing: $xx.xx for one, $yy.yy for two. You could have the item bundled with another to differentiate your offer to that of a nearby competitor and thereby offering you the opportunity to break free on pricing.
Pricing is not black and white. Indeed, it plays to your advantage if it is not black and while as this makes price comparison more difficult, which is good for you. Zee my other notes on discount vouchers and multi-buy pricing.
Think carefully about where in a price band you price an item. For example, Items priced above $7.99 could probably sell at $9.99. Items above $19.99 should either be $24.99 or $29.99 and no other number in between. Above $29.99 more often you should target $39.99.
Avoid nothing prices that can cost GP. For example: $21.95 should be $24.99; $112.50 à$119.99; $6.50 à$7.99; $8.75 à$9.99; $132.50 à$139.99; $36.50 à$39.99, and so on.
Choose to go to a higher price point rather than lower. Independent retail businesses, newsagencies especially, are expected to be more expensive. If you counter this with a consistently offered and generous discount voucher program then erring on the higher side of pricing works for you as your voucher sets value perception for your shoppers.
My recommendation is that you always end your prices with a .99 and price at above RRP. I see no value in a .00 price point. Indeed, I see that as an opportunity lost.
Here is what this post is really about: think about and determine the pricing policy you want for your specific business and establish this as a guide for your business. This can make it easier for anyone in the business faced with setting a sale price for new items. Without it, pricing will take longer. Worse, you could make mistakes
News is reporting that Woolworths is set to open a cashless store in Sydney.
If your usual idea of a Woolworths is a large store with multitudes of aisles, a deli, and a liquor store to the left as you leave, you may need to think again.
Woolworths is putting the finishing touches to a new concept store that is so tiny it has only a single aisle.
About 40 times more compact than a usual store, Australia’s smallest ever Woolworths has been shoe-horned into the site of a former coffee shop at the bottom of an office block.
The store will also be Woolies’ first ever completely cashless store – with no notes or coins accepted. But it’s slight nature means there is one big selling item that will be missing.
The company hadn’t made an official announcement, but news.com.au spied an under-construction store in inner city Sydney which sported the never seen before “Woolworths MetroGo” branding half hidden under plastic. Inside staff were scurrying to fill the shelves.
The next step will be no scanning of products by you or them, no counter. Walk in, take what you went, leave. This already exists in the US.
We have to keep up.
Tabcorp has boosted the price money for Lucky Lotteries in a move that appears to seek to drive sales. The prize pool usually stars at $1M and increases $240,ooo each time it is not won. Tabcorp intervened at $2,680,000 and boosted the prize pool to more than $6M.
The unexpected boost makes the product more interesting, more easily pitched, and that’s mission critical for Tabcorp and, I am sure they hope, their retail partners. Certainly, plenty of retailers are pitching it one social media.