I’m going to keep this simple and achievable. If you don’t have a plan for your newsagency for this year, do these things to get started, right away.
Find out what’s not working: the quietest hours of the day, stock that’s not selling, suppliers who are under performing. Your newsagency software can easily reveal these things to you, in seconds. These things provide you with your starting point, they provide you ToDo list.
What’s not working is stock you’re not selling, stock not sold whatsoever over the last, say, six months. List it and quit it. Getting a fraction of the cost is better that you getting nothing, which is what you’re experiencing today. Quit dead stock urgently.
Suppliers not performing are those shown to have stock that’s moving slowly or contributing the least to your grow profit. One you have the list, consider whether to quit the supplier or, maybe, to at least talk with them and explain the situation. Doing nothing with this information is not an option. Take action based on the evidence you have.
The quietest hours of the day are the most expensive in terms of labour cost. Look at your roster. Roster the business for profit over friendship. Or, figure out steps you can take to make those underperforming hours work better for you. Is there work on the business done in other times that can be moved to them?
These three moves are not a complete plan, they are not even part of a plan. The goal here is to give you thinks you can do today, action you can do today.
Action is what 2025 has to be about in every newsagency business. I think this has to be a year of urgency in our channel and we need to drive that urgency ourselves as no one else is likely to drive it for us.
Now before you say I am being melodramatic, the reality is that lottery purchases continue to migrate online, print media sales continue to decline, rents are increasing as are labour costs. These are known things. They alone are enough of a reason for us to see an urgency for us working on our businesses.
If you don’t have a plan for this year, use the steps here and, hopefully, while doing that opportunities for your own plan will come to you.
What you achieve in, with and from your newsagency in 2025 is 100% up to you. Success will come from change.